


where the story ends

by bluepeony



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Pennywise (IT), Celebrity Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak is a Mess, First Love, High School, M/M, Minor Character Death, Minor Original Character(s), Mother-Son Relationship, Past Relationship(s), Secret Relationship, Sonia Kaspbrak's A+ Parenting, Teenagers, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:41:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 86,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24697741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluepeony/pseuds/bluepeony
Summary: It’s 1992. Eddie’s only been back at Derry High five minutes, and between the mixtapes, algebra homework and sour punch twists, he’s managed to fall in love.Fast forward twenty years: Eddie’s back in Derry, and so is Richie Tozier. All Eddie wanted to do was clear out his mother’s house and get out of town, but all of a sudden he’s having to confront the past. And figure out the future.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Past Eddie Kaspbrak/OMC
Comments: 185
Kudos: 183





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Guess who's back in the house
> 
> This has been my lockdown project and will be updated regularly so let me know if you're enjoying it!
> 
> Two things to note:  
> This story will contain mentions of death, depictions of the unhealthy relationship between Eddie and his mother, and non-specific descriptions of Munchausen's syndrome, so please be aware if that is something you're sensitive to
> 
> Also this story contains some original characters, because there was no way around it. Where possible I've tried to ensure any OCs are either based on characters mentioned in passing in the original novel, or have a canon counterpart.
> 
> Enjoy!

**September 1992**

When he was sixteen years old, Alexander the Great was put in charge of Macedonia. Rather than sit around and whine about it, he promptly founded an entire city. Which he then named after himself. Bold.

At sixteen, Benedict XI was already pope. Mary Queen of Scots was already queen of France. Joan of Arc had already boldly proclaimed herself a virgin warrior sent by God to deliver her country from her enemies, and was on the verge of cutting her own bangs just to really drive it home that she was serious.

Eddie Kaspbrak is sixteen years old, and he can’t even get through one day of school.

“I think I need to go home.” He stands in the doorway of the nurse’s office. It smells of rubbing alcohol and cherry cough syrup, and he finds it instantly comforting.

The nurse looks over at him with disinterest, bubblegum smile not quite reaching her eyes.

“I’m sorry?”

“I don’t think I’m very well,” Eddie elaborates. He hitches the strap of his backpack up on his shoulder. It rubs his skin through his thin t-shirt, irritated by the sweat of a hot September.

“It’s 10am,” says the nurse, “on the first day of school.”

“Yes,” he says, and she must sense the _and..?_ in his tone, because she frowns at him.

“What are your symptoms?”

“I’m hot. And dizzy. And…” He realises these sound like symptoms of summer, not a sickness, so he quickly adds, “And I feel sick.”

“Then you should drink some water and stay in the shade until the bell goes for next period.” She turns back to her desk, away from him.

Eddie stares at the back of her head. _Bitch_.

“Where’s Nurse Farrell?” he asks instead.

“I’m sorry?”

“The other nurse, is she here? She knows me.”

“There is no other nurse. Just me.” She gives him a sickly smile. “Sorry about that.”

“Okay. It’s just, she was here before. Last year? I’m not new, I’ve been off sick.” He senses this is getting him nowhere, and changes tack. “I’m on a _lot_ of medication -”

“Yes,” she interrupts. “Mr Pelletier has told me all about you. Eddie, isn’t it? Would you like a water bottle, Eddie? I have some in the back.”

He wonders what Mr Pelletier could have told her to make Eddie so easily identifiable. The thought concerns him, and he feels even sicker.

“No, thanks,” he mumbles, pushing away from the doorframe. He knows a lost cause when he sees one, and if he wants any chance of preferential treatment this semester it’s probably better to not piss her off too badly.

Eddie glances at the bronze name plate on the door before he leaves. Nurse Libby.

He wishes Nurse Farrell were still here. She used to let him sit in her office and play with confiscated yo-yos. There was always a bowl of Twizzlers on her desk. She called him honey-bunch.

He wanders back down the hallways, trying to avoid eye contact with anybody. Does he really need to hurl into a trash can, or is he just imagining things? He was sick last night, but only because his vitamin got stuck in his throat and he was trying to get it back up.

He crouches in front of his locker to get a textbook for next period, seeing as Nurse Libby has condemned him to it. Someone above him says his name, and Eddie stands up so quickly the head rush nearly sends him toppling back down again.

“Woah, you okay there? Eddie?” There are two hands on his shoulders, propping him up. “Hey! I _thought_ it was you.”

It’s Richie Tozier, but Eddie has to do a double take to make sure.

“You got your braces off,” Eddie blurts out idiotically. Richie has grown at least a foot in height, and the only thing that’s eye level with Eddie right now is his big, gleaming mouth.

Richie laughs, letting go of Eddie’s shoulders. “Okay? Like, six months ago, yeah.”

His voice is deeper. He’s ditched the dorky Buddy Hollies for vintage half-rim glasses. He still has a trucker’s wardrobe, though. Flannel shirt and stomping Docs. Real ones, with the golden thread on the soles.

He looks – (inexplicably, part of Eddie doesn’t want to acknowledge it) – he looks kind of _cool_.

“I didn’t know you were coming back!” he says.

“Me neither,” Eddie admits, hugging his text book to his chest. “It was kind of a last minute thing.”

“Oh, well that sucks. I mean, unless you _wanted_ to come back..? Did you?”

Eddie takes a deep breath. He didn’t want to come back. He didn’t want to be the new kid who wasn’t really the new kid, just the old-new kid, the one who defies categorization because he knows everyone and everyone knows him, but he doesn’t have any friends, and he doesn’t think he’ll be able to slot himself into any pre-established clique.

“Totally,” he says, forcing a smile. “I was going crazy at home. There’s only so much day time TV one person can take.”

“Not me. I could totally manage it. Gimme Jerry Springer over Hosmer’s Calc class any day.”

Richie grins down at him, and Eddie finds himself smiling back without having to force it this time.

“So are you –” Richie begins, but someone calls his name across the hall, interrupting him. A couple of kids in their year are approaching, swinging their shoulder bags.

“Oh – are they your friends?” Eddie asks lightly, stomach clenching a little at the thought. He recognises them. One of them stuffed Ben Hanscom’s backpack with cafeteria bologna in ninth grade. The other used to set girls’ gym shoes on fire beneath the swings in elementary school.

They look fairly normal now. Innocuous, even. One of them is wearing a Nirvana t-shirt. Eddie knows about Nirvana; they’re devil worshippers and heroin addicts from Seattle. He’s pretty sure they drowned a baby once. Something like that.

“I gotta go,” says Richie, not answering the question, but raising a hand in acknowledgement to them, before turning back to Eddie. “See you around, though? Hey, we should hang out.” Smiling, he reaches out and takes hold of Eddie’s shoulders again, like he’s straightening up a ragdoll. “Try to stay upright till then, huh?”

*

They’d been friends, once. Eddie and Richie, and Bill, who lived in a really big house, and Stanley, who was a Scout, which was lame, but he had a cool clasp knife, which made him okay.

They’d done almost everything as a group of four. Unruly games of Dungeons & Dragons fraught with disagreement. Camping in Bill’s back garden, because it was big enough to feel like the wilderness. Hanging out of the window in Richie’s attic room with binoculars to look for UFOs. Selling watery lemonade for twenty-five cents to raise money for comic books and Garbage Pail Kids. School projects, Morse code, walkie-talkies, horror movie marathons when they were supposed to be asleep. Fixing their bike chains with their bare hands, wiping the oil on their jeans.

They shared their first experience of Derry’s new movie theatre together: _Back to the Future_ for Bill’s ninth birthday, at the time the most thrilling thing any of them had ever seen. They all went back to Bill’s and tried to learn how to skateboard like Marty McFly, but Richie’s enthusiasm led to a sprained his ankle which put a sudden stop to their ambitions. A couple of years later, their new obsession was _Jaws: The Revenge_ which, incidentally, also ended in Richie spraining his ankle. A lot of what they did ended in injury, or near-injury, or occasionally near-death, but that’s part and parcel of growing up in a small town. Kids make their own entertainment, and it’s nearly always potentially lethal.

Eddie sits in a daze, thinking of all those hours they spent painstakingly devising trading card strategies and pilfering lemonade from Bill’s dad’s basement bar to stretch out with tap water. He thinks of Richie’s big mouth full of red braces, his old glasses invariably held together with scotch tape.

And now, this new boy, like a changeling. Straight, white teeth and newly freckled skin; limbs that no longer seem to drag behind the rest of him.

“Eddie? I hope you’re concentrating?” says Robin, one of the school secretaries tasked with looking after him for the day.

He doesn’t get a lunch break today. They’ve sat him down at a desk in a small classroom and dumped a book full of questions in front of him, given him a couple of hours to answer them. They’re trying to figure out whether or not he’s stupid. They haven’t said this, but it’s pretty clear.

The first half of the book is full of math and science. It asks him to determine the formula of iron pyrites, calculate bond energies, work out the equations of curves. He _must_ show _all_ of his working, it stipulates several times over in threatening bold type. Eddie scratches his fingernails against his forearm until the skin there starts to burn. The calculator Robin’s provided him with remains largely untouched.

He tries to answer as many as he can, but most of what he writes ends up crossed out and written over and crossed out again. Eventually he gives up and flips to the Humanities section.

Eddie corrects the spelling and grammar in a passage from _Lord of the Flies_ , and labels a geological cross-section, and describes in very vague terms what happens at a Catholic Mass. Then, in the History section, when he’s asked why American settlers travelled across the Great Plains in the nineteenth century, he feels some of the tightness in his chest ease.

He starts by talking about western farming, but this gradually derails into a long explanation of how white settlers destroyed the Native American way of life by making them live on government approved reservations and creating ridiculous policies and expecting them to give up their culture and traditions just to be white Christian corn farmers.

Eddie’s pretty sure it’s all correct, even if some of it is slightly inspired by the _Geronimo_ movie he has at home. But weirdly, Mr Pelletier, the principal, seems kind of annoyed when he reads it.

“What _is_ all this?” he says, flipping through the pages later that afternoon.

“Um,” says Eddie, sitting in front of Mr Pelletier’s desk, “just my answers.”

“' _And basically the white settlers totally screwed over the Native Americans because they thought they knew everything, like most white people do'?”_

__

Eddie shrugs, fiddling with his wristwatch.

__

“You can’t write that,” says Mr Pelletier.

__

“Why not?”

__

“Because it’s not what the question asked.”

__

“Well, I’m kind of good at history so I figured I’d expand on the question a little.”

__

“I would call this more of an unnecessary digression than a useful expansion, Eddie.”

__

Typical. Even when Eddie tries to do something right, he does it wrong. Mr Pelletier sighs and slaps the booklet down on the big walnut desk in his office. He hasn’t even said anything about the math or science parts, and while Eddie is grateful for this, he knows it’s probably a bad sign.

__

“You’ve been home schooled for – eighteen months, that’s right, isn’t it? Half of ninth grade and all of tenth.”

__

Mr Pelletier scrubs a hand over his face. He’s a very red-faced man, with big sallow eyes and a horrible moustache. Eddie’s never liked him. He doesn’t really like his office either, which is gloomy and smells of cloves. There’s a big window looking out on to one of the sports fields where kids are playing soccer.

__

“Alright, well. I’ll pass this around some of your teachers and we’ll get you properly assessed and then…” He pauses, for an unnervingly long time, staring at a dull football trophy opposite the desk, like he’s dwelling on happier times. “Decide how best to proceed.”

__

“Mr Pelletier,” says Eddie, leaning forward in his chair, “if it helps, I could always just… leave?”

__

Mr Pelletier looks like he doesn’t know whether or not to laugh.

__

“I don’t think that’s really the best option, son.” When he realises Eddie isn’t joking, he continues, a little more sternly, “Don’t you want to do well in your SATs? Go to college?”

__

Eddie wants to go home and get under his bed covers and block out the world with a book about Roman gladiators and a box of animal crackers.

__

“Sure,” he says instead.

__

“Well, then. Stick at it and I’m sure we’ll see good things from you. Now, it’s a beautiful day out there. Why don’t you go ahead and find some of your friends? I’m sure they’re dying to catch up with you after all this time.”

__

He says this in an extremely flat voice, as though the only thing that’s dying is him – slowly.

__

Eddie doesn’t bother explaining that he doesn’t have friends. Well, that’s not quite true. He has Mike – previously the only other home-schooled kid in town, now the _only_ home-schooled kid in town. Mike hasn’t been dragged back to Derry High on account of unsatisfactory progress. Mike’s still at home, trundling through trig and _The Great Gatsby_ with his grandfather. And here’s Eddie, a square peg to the school’s round hole.

__

“And on that note – Miss McCarthy?” Mr Pelletier calls into the little annexe off his office. “Could you call young Bill in, please?”

__

Eddie exhales. _Not Bill, not Bill_. It’s bad enough having to make new friends without being palmed off on to old ones like a useless extra limb.

__

In walks Bill, much skinnier and taller than Eddie remembers.

__

“Come on, Mr Denborough, hands out of your pockets, look alive now,” says Mr Pelletier. “There, much better. Thanks for coming in, Bill. Did you have a good summer?”

__

Agonizing small talk is made for three whole minutes before they’re allowed to go. Eddie knows because he watches the plastic hands of the clock on the wall the entire time. When Bill finally starts out of the door, Eddie mutely follows.

__

“It’s good to see you back,” Bill says, ever polite.

__

He had a laborious stutter as a kid that’s been cured, Eddie’s heard from his mother, by expensive private speech therapy. They walk side by side, not looking at each other. Eddie clenches his fists around the straps of his backpack.

__

“Is it weird?” Bill asks.

__

“Being here? Um, kind of. Everyone looks a little different but not, if that makes sense.”

__

He nods. “Are you, um...”

__

“What?” says Eddie, not looking up, even though he knows what.

__

“Are you, like... better now..?”

__

Eddie doesn’t have to come up with an answer. Two kids he dimly recognises pass them in the hallway, and make a huge show of dodging out of Eddie’s way.

__

“Dude!” one of them says, striding backwards, arms out. “Shouldn’t you be ringing a fucking bell or some shit?”

__

Clearly, Eddie’s notoriety is spreading fast.

__

He knows he’s supposed to shrug. Act like it doesn’t bother him. Instead he burns, a tight ball of dread unfurling itself in his stomach. He hates the thought that people know him better than he knows them. Nurse Libby. Random kids in the hallway. He can’t take it out on them, so he takes it out on Bill instead.

__

“Look, you don’t have to hang around with me just because you feel sorry for me,” he says, voice faltering before he's finished speaking..

__

Before giving Bill a chance to answer, Eddie takes himself off to the boys’ bathroom as fast as his legs will carry him, shuts himself into a cubicle, and has a long pull on his inhaler. He sits on his backpack so he doesn’t have to sit on the toilet seat, and in his head he counts as many American presidents as he can remember, until the bell finally rings.

__

__

*

__

__

**January 2012**

__

They have the news on in the bar.

__

“ _For most people, the New Year is cause for celebration – but for many this year it’s cause for concern. Everyone on the planet is talking about_ that _prediction in a 5,000 year old Mayan calendar. World leaders and scientists scrambled today to say the end of the world is_ not _nigh. Here’s Fox’s Ted Hadfield…_ ”

__

“Not nigh?” Eddie mutters to himself, shredding a cardboard coaster between his fingers. “It’s very fucking nigh.”

__

He senses someone watching him, and looks sideways at the man sitting on the stool beside his.

__

“I’m not crazy,” he says, almost apologetically.

__

“Uh huh,” says the man, turning away from him.

__

Fine. Whatever. Eddie catches the eye of the barman and orders another drink. Same again.

__

He feels disoriented, wondering how it’s even possible that he’s here right now. The Three Tides in Derry – the bar everyone’s dad used to get hammered in. It hasn’t changed. Same 1960s wood panelling around the bar; same gloom-stricken faces peering into cloudy glasses. He’s pretty certain the barman is even the same, which seems odd, because that would put him at about a hundred and three years old.

__

Yesterday Eddie woke up in his tiny box of an apartment in New York – this morning, his childhood bed. It’s an unsettling, dislocating feeling.

__

His eyes drift back to the television.

__

“ _It’s surprising how potent this obscure Mayan prophecy has turned out to be, and the paranoia is global. Today, Russian president Vladimir Putin -_ ”

__

The world will end soon, and somehow, fate has steered Eddie back into the stiff embrace of Derry, Maine. It’s kind of sick.

__

He drains half his beer, dimly aware of the man beside him vacating his seat and then, a few minutes later, someone else taking it. They order a negroni. The barman says they don’t do cocktails, emphasis on the _cock_. The customer laughs and orders a beer instead.

__

“I know you.”

__

Eddie glances up, blinking through slightly dazed eyes. He’s been awake since four a.m.

__

“Doubt it,” he says, turning back to the pieces of his shredded coaster. “I’m not from here.”

__

“Sure, Derry is a lovely place to vacation this time of year.”

__

Eddie rolls his eyes. He’d been offended when the last guy thought he was nuts and wouldn’t make eye contact, but now he’s offended that this guy wants to talk to him. It’s like being on a train, wanting people to both fill and avoid the neighbouring empty seat. He senses he’s being watched and purses his lips, feeling his annoyance growing.

__

“I _do_ know you -”

__

“Look, I’m really not -” Eddie starts, turning sharply. But he has to stop, because he’s been mistaken, and yes, of course, they do know each other. “Richie?”

__

A smile half disbelieving, half pleased appears across Richie Tozier’s bizarrely handsome face.

__

“Thought so,” he says, satisfied.

__

And he is handsome, of course, in the way that celebrities are. Like all the contrast and colour has been turned up, so that they’re good to look at but don’t seem entirely real, a hologram whose voice is always a decibel above everyone else’s.

__

Richie quirks an eyebrow. “Not from around here, huh?”

__

“I’m not, I’m… visiting.”

__

His eyes - behind big, expensive glasses - drift down and back up again, clearly surveying Eddie’s white shirt and loose black tie, the dull black jacket hanging limp from the back of the stool. Surprisingly, he has the tact not to say anything about it.

__

“I’m visiting too. This was the first Christmas I’ve spent with family in twelve years, can you believe that? I’m back in the attic with my lava lamp and Breeders posters, feet hanging off the goddamned bed.”

__

“Surprised your mom didn’t turn it into a sewing room,” Eddie just about has the presence of mind to say.

__

“She did, she just kept the posters up. Maggie’s a sucker for feminist grunge, didn’t you know?”

__

Eddie manages a laugh, but he feels more displaced than ever. He almost can’t look at Richie, for all that it’s fucking with his head.

__

He’s seen him plenty, of course, over the years. Golden boy of late-night comedy and radio breakfast shows, irreverent jester of reality TV and Saturday music programs. Kids eat it up, but no one in here seems to recognise him. Or if they do, they don’t care. The Three Tides being what it is, the patrons would sooner remember Richie as a hell-bound teenager before they’d recognise him as a celebrity.

__

“So,” says Richie, tilting his head to one side. His hair is piled into a rough-around-the-edges quiff, all silly and expensive. “How long are you visiting for?”

__

“Hopefully no more than a week,” Eddie replies and, resigned to the fact that he has no way of avoiding the issue any longer, he continues, “I’m here for a funeral. You’ve just gate crashed the wake, actually.”

__

Richie’s expression shifts, and there’s something vaguely gratifying about seeing him squirm.

__

“I’m sorry. Was it – ?”

__

“My mother, yeah.”

__

“I’m sorry, Eddie. She was, um…” But even the loquacious loudmouth of Comedy Central can’t find the words to describe Sonia Kaspbrak.

__

Eddie puts him out of his misery.

__

“Don’t worry about it. We knew it was coming, she’s been ill a long time.” He pauses. “I was joking, by the way. This isn’t the wake.”

__

“That’s a shame, some of my best material was written for wakes.” Richie’s dark eyes give him another once over behind their ridiculous designer frames. “You sure you’re okay?”

__

“I mean, I’m not really okay because this is fucking weird. Being back here. Seeing you. But I’m not cut up about it, if that’s what you mean. Is that fucked up? It’s probably fucked up.”

__

Richie shrugs. “You can only feel the way you feel, right?”

__

“Very profound.”

__

“Thanks, I came up with it myself.”

__

Eddie drains the last of his drink and moves to stand. “Anyway, I should head off.”

__

“What? Why? Don’t go, we should catch up.”

__

“On what?”

__

“The last – oh, I don’t know, twenty years?”

__

“What’s there to say?” Eddie pulls on his jacket. It’s old now. He bought it for a friend’s funeral in 1999. “You’re rich and famous. My mom’s dead. Happy New Year.”

__

Richie appears taken aback, and why shouldn’t he? Eddie’s acting like a psychopath. God, maybe he _is_ a psychopath. Psychopaths wouldn’t be sad about their mothers dying either.

__

“Sorry,” he sighs. “You must think I’m a fucking weirdo.”

__

Richie gives a low chuckle. “Yeah, well, we’re both fucking weirdos. Remember?”

__

He says this, and for a second the rest of the world recedes. The mood seems to lift a little, and Eddie manages a smile. Richie smiles back. A proper smile this time, not a flashy hologram.

__

“Do you have somewhere to stay?” he asks.

__

“I’m staying at my mom’s. I need to sort the house out as much as I can before I go back. That’s why I should go. Early start means an early finish, right?”

__

Richie shrugs. “Not too early, I hope?”

__

Eddie isn’t sure what this is. Pity? Flirting? Without answering, he rummages in his wallet for money and drops it on the bar top.

__

“Look, just –” Richie holds his hands up, like he’s surrendering to something. “Take my number, okay? Let’s hang out at least once before you go back to… to..?”

__

“New York.”

__

Richie smiles. “Yeah? I like that. It suits you.”

__

They swap numbers, and Richie doesn’t seem concerned that Eddie could abuse the information. He needn’t worry anyway. Eddie has no intention of using the number, either to leak it or to text it.

__

Right now, he has two goals and two goals only: clean up his mother’s house, and get the hell out of Derry.

__


	2. Chapter 2

**September 1992**

That first week trudges by agonisingly slowly, but Eddie’s gone off the idea of staying home. If everyone at school is convinced he’s got some incurable disease, the last thing he wants to do is help confirm their suspicions.

His mother has other ideas.

“You look so pale,” she says on Friday morning, pouring pancake mix into the frying pan. “You’re worn out.”

“I’m fine. I don’t feel tired at all,” he says, not looking up from his math homework. It was only set on Tuesday but it’s due this morning and he still can’t answer half of it. He stares at the pages until the writing turns to black squiggles. He hates algebra. Letters have no business getting involved in math.

His mother leaves the batter to puff up in the pan and comes over to him, putting her hot hand on his forehead.

“Mom,” he complains, trying to dodge her so he can see what he’s writing.

“You’re burning up.”

“I’m really not.”

“Still, it’s Friday now. If you don’t feel up to it, you might as well just stay home.” She eases back around the table to the stove. “How many pancakes do you want, honey? Five or six?”

“Two, please.”

She frowns and makes three for him. He isn’t very hungry, but he eats them all so she doesn’t have any more reason to think that he’s sick. It’s likely he isn’t going to be able to leave school again any time soon so he might as well get used to it. He’s doing his best to keep away from Nurse Libby’s office, telling himself over and over like a mantra that all the difficult parts will get easier over time.

His mom catches him by the front door just as he’s shrugging on his backpack.

“Don’t forget this.” She jams an envelope into his hand.

“What is it?”

“It’s to say you’re exempt from gym class. I fixed it so you don’t have to do it.” She smiles at him, her cheeks round and rosy, like she thinks he’ll be pleased.

“Why?” he asks, staring at the envelope. It doesn’t have anyone’s name on it, just _Derry High School Phys Ed Department_ in his mother’s small, severe handwriting.

“Oh, honey. Do you really have to ask why?” She tucks his chin into her hand and lowers her voice, as if someone could be listening. “You remember what happened the last time you did gym. Do we really want a repeat of that?”

She says _we_ like it happened to her too.

“But –”

“Besides, I should never have let you take that awful class in the first place,” she interrupts, tucking a stray curl of hair behind his ear. “Not with your asthma.”

“Mom, lots of kids with asthma do sports. It’s not a big deal.”

“For Christ’s sake, Eddie, I thought you’d be pleased.”

Her tone has turned sharp; his cue to shut up.

“Fine, whatever. Thanks… I guess.” He turns to grab the handle on the front door, but she stops him, putting her cheek out for a kiss.

“Remember – Friday night is beauty night. I’ll be at Aunt Marie’s when you get back. There’ll be casserole in the kitchen.” She opens the door for him. “Make sure you eat plenty. I’ll know if you don’t.”

Eddie waits until he’s turned the corner at the end of their street before crumpling up the letter and tossing it in a trash can. He may be pretty useless at math and science and making friends, but he’s a fast runner and a good catcher and he’s pretty sure gym might be his one chance to prove he’s not completely pathetic.

*

Eddie toughs out the morning and gets through relatively unscathed until the period after first break, Biology, when he can’t point to the ribosomes of a plant cell and the teacher snatches the marker off him and tells him he’s hopeless.

Then there’s English; midway through the lesson his teacher says, “Some people of Shakespeare’s time believed disease was a punishment for sinful behaviour,” and someone from the back of the room calls out, “What sinful behaviour’s Kaspbrak been getting up to then?” and everybody laughs and looks at him, and he can’t even miss their faces because he’s sitting at the back of the class.

He doesn’t speak in homeroom, he avoids people in the corridors, and by the time lunch comes around he’s ready to give up and attempt another grilling of the school nurse. His mom won’t mind if he comes home early. In fact, that’s an understatement – she’ll be over the moon.

“Hey, Eddie.” Stanley Uris stops him in the hallway just as Eddie’s about to make his precious escape. “Coming for lunch?”

“Uh, well.” Eddie snatches for an excuse – but then Stan gives him this friendly smile which, to Eddie’s surprise, actually dissipates his urge to run. “Yeah, I am.”

Perhaps of his own volition or perhaps because a teacher has told him to, Stan has been friendly to Eddie all week. Lending him a pen in Social Studies. Saving him a seat at lunch. Not laughing at Eddie when people call out humiliating things in lessons.

They were never _best_ friends – not like Bill and Richie used to be – but Eddie’s always liked Stan. He’s calm and level-headed. Back in middle school, he was always the diplomatic voice necessary in their frankly chaotic foursome. The one who stopped them stealing candy from the drugstore, or burning ants with sunlight and bits of broken bottles.

Stan still hangs around with Bill, and with Ben Hanscom the bologna kid. They’re both hunched over a Gameboy in the cafeteria when Eddie and Stan get there. Bill, ever tactful, hasn’t mentioned Eddie’s little outburst on Monday. He even smiles when Eddie sits down at their table, like he’s forgotten all about it.

Instead of a lunch box, Stan takes out three different exercise books and dumps them on the table.

“You’re doing homework?” Eddie asks, surprised. And kind of impressed.

“Yeah, I want a free weekend,” says Stan. But he’s been doing the same amount of homework at lunch all week. Eddie doesn’t understand how someone who constantly does homework can have so _much_ of the stuff.

“Hey, are you good at Biology?” Eddie asks before he can stop himself, thinking back to his car crash lesson this morning. His teacher’s stony expression. His own face burning red. “Only I really don’t have a clue about, uh... well, any of it.”

Bill’s ears prick up at this. He actually manages to tear his eyes away from Super Mario for a second.

“You should’ve seen Stan’s Science Fair project last year. He made an actual robotic bird to demonstrate how evolution will eventually lead to more efficient flight.”

“Did you win?” Eddie asks Stan. He’s picturing something like a mini Transformer with a beak.

“No,” Stan says, a little bitterly. “Rory Wekamp’s potato launcher did. I can help you with Biology. Let me see it.”

The trouble is, Stan wants to actually _help_ Eddie, rather than just give him the answers to the homework. He’s very patient, and he explains things a lot more simply than a teacher, but Eddie can’t help letting his eyes drift around the cafeteria once phrases like ‘xylem’ and ‘palisade mesophyll’ start to lose their meaning. If they ever had any meaning for him to begin with.

The lunch room at Derry High is huge and white, with round plastic tables in rows like a prison cafeteria. It’s stuffed to the brim with kids and it’s loud, so _loud_. Was it always this loud? He’s used to lunch being a PB&J and a glass of milk at his kitchen table, or Cheetos and apple sticks in the garden with his friend Mike. This place is pure bedlam.

He spots Richie at a table a few metres from theirs, mid-story, hands gesticulating wildly, while the people sitting with him laugh and shove fries in their big, loud mouths. Eddie can’t believe what Richie looks like these days. He seems so much older than Stan and Bill and Ben, even though he isn’t – he was the youngest in their group back in middle school. He’s got expensive looking sneakers on today, and a t-shirt with a band on Eddie doesn’t recognise. There’s no way of distinguishing a central seat at the white hexagonal tables, but somehow Richie makes it look like he’s sitting at the head of his. Maybe it’s because everyone sitting with him has turned to face him. To listen to him.

Stan waves a pen in front of Eddie’s face.

“Earth to Edward? How can you expect to learn about absorption spectrums if you aren’t absorbing the full spectrum of what I’m saying?”

“Sorry,” says Eddie, turning to face him.

“I get it. Richie’s just fascinating, huh?”

“I wasn’t –”

“It’s the hair, right? So damn big you can’t look away.”

“I just was thinking about how we all used to go around together. That’s all.”

Stan doesn’t respond to this. He busies himself with labelling the diagram in Eddie’s Biology book, even though he said he wasn’t going to do it for him.

Bill clears his throat. “We don’t really talk with him anymore. I mean, I had him as a lab partner last year but –”

“But he’s kind of an asshole now,” Stan finishes, sliding the book back to Eddie.

“How come?” says Eddie.

Stan shrugs, a little petulantly. “Beats me.”

Ben’s the only one who hasn’t said anything so far. He’s quiet. He was still pretty much the new kid last time Eddie was here, back in ninth grade, and Eddie doesn’t know much about him other than the bologna thing, and the fact he got outed by Henry Bowers for having New Kids on the Block posters in his locker. But he must be pretty sharp because he senses the need for a change of subject.

“So Gittelman’s gonna have my ass for forgetting my gym kit again,” he says, cutting through the silence. “Can’t wait to see what rotting specimens he pulls out of Lost & Found for me today.”

Gym. Eddie had forgotten all about it.

When the bell rings for last period, he follows the others to the changing rooms, hoping to get lost in the crowd.

“Kaspbrak! Boys who are _not_ doing gym do _not_ need to go to the changing rooms.”

Eddie cringes as Gittelman’s voice booms down the P.E. corridor. All around him, boys snort derisively.

“But I want to do it,” Eddie says, hanging back.

“I _want_ does not equate to I _will_ ,” his teacher says, with a smug look on his face like he’s just imparted some extremely profound wisdom. “I _want_ to win the Boothbay Harbor Lobster Eating Contest, but that’s a dream that’s slipped through my fingers one too many times, son.”

“Um, okay.”

“You’ll sit on the bleachers and get on with homework. I’m sure you have plenty of reading to keep you busy.”

He can’t stand the way Gittelman’s looking at him, lip curling up on one side in a silly sneer. He says _reading_ like it’s the lowest form of academic endeavour. To him, it probably is.

“It’s just.” Eddie takes a deep breath, trying to recall the brief speech he prepared in his head on his way to the sports block. “I think if you gave me a chance –”

“Sorry, no can do,” says Gittelman, but it’s clear he’s not sorry at all. “Bleachers – now.”

Eddie suppresses a sigh as he makes for the door and starts in the direction of the sports field. Once he gets there he keeps going, past the football posts and the bleachers and the other reject kids sitting out gym because of a broken wrist or a forged doctor’s note. There’s no way he’s going to put himself on display for everyone to get a good look at, like a leper in a colony.

Of course, he should have known his mom’s letter wouldn’t be the extent of it, merely a backstop. She’ll have called up the school. She’ll have put a notice in the newspaper, hired a damn billboard out. Hell, if he looks up at the sky he’ll probably see a blimp that reads: **_EDDIE KASPBRAK IS TOO FRAGILE FOR GYM CLASS_**.

He arrives at the next field over, the one they use for cross country in summer. It’s empty now. There’s a shed where they keep hurdles and marking paint which seems a decent spot to while away an hour without being bothered. But when he opens the door, he finds somebody is already here.

Richie says, without even missing a beat, “Occupied.”

“Sorry,” Eddie stammers, like an idiot.

He backs out, but before he can leave Richie reaches out to stick his expensive sneaker between the door and its frame, stopping it from closing.

“Wait! Sorry, man. I didn’t realise it was you.” He passes the lighter in his right hand to his left, which is already holding a pack of cigarettes, and pulls the door to the shed back like this is his home, sweeping his other arm invitingly. “Do come in, you’re most welcome.”

Eddie wavers, then steps over the threshold gingerly. The shed is full of dust and cobwebs, and he considers backing out again. But then Richie smiles at him brightly, and kicks the door to the shed closed behind them before Eddie can make a decision.

“Welcome to my humble abode,” he says, slipping a cigarette out of his pack. He gestures to Eddie fussily. “Uh, shoes _off_ , please.”

“ _What_?”

Richie looks at him. “Joke?”

“Oh,” says Eddie, nose already beginning to prickle with dust. He scrubs at it with the back of his hand.

Richie peers at him in the gloom, cocking his head to one side.

“I didn’t have you down as the kind of guy who ditched,” he says.

Eddie isn’t about to tell him that his mother has already ditched the class for him. He shrugs, poking around at the space markers and relay batons lining the shelves. A spider darts out from behind an old shot put, and he snatches his hand back.

“Gym is a huge waste of time,” he says, stepping away from the shelves.

Richie seems pleased by this. He cocks his open cigarette packet towards Eddie questioningly.

Eddie hesitates. Smoking is disgusting, but he doesn’t want Richie to think he’s too scared, so he slips one of the horrible little sticks out of the packet. It’s like holding cancer in his hand. He immediately wants to drop it on the dusty floor.

“So, uh, what – is this your own little personal hideout?” he asks instead.

Richie shrugs, a little grin on his face as he lights his cigarette. “I’m not saying it belongs to me, but I’ve been coming here since Christmas and you’re the first person to gate crash. I guess we’re the only two people at this school smart enough to realise team sports are just one big circle jerk of mediocrity, huh?”

Eddie wonders what Richie would think if he’d heard him trying to convince Gittelman to let him participate in kickball not ten minutes ago.

“So no one notices you’re missing every week?”

“To be honest, I think Gittelman prefers it when I’m not there. I guess you could say we have an unspoken agreement.”

Richie leans towards Eddie with his lighter, and Eddie holds the cigarette between his lips the way he’s just seen Richie do. He winces when the flame snaps up in front of him, and tries not to cough as he draws on it, very lightly. He fixes his gaze on the afternoon sunlight streaming through the small window, trying to keep his eyes from watering.

If Richie notices this, he’s kind enough not to say anything.

“You know what?” he says decisively, pushing himself away from the wall. “We should get out of here.”

Eddie stares at him. “Are we… coming back?”

“Um, no,” Richie snorts, picking up his backpack. It’s covered in patches and badges, and looks like it only needs one more book to split completely at the seams. “It’s last period on a Friday. What’s the point in ditching in here when we could ditch out there? Where it’s sunny? And they have junk food?”

Which makes sense. If there’s ever an ideal time for Eddie to skip school, it’s now. They’ve already been gone a quarter of the lesson, and no one’s come looking for them yet.

Although he doesn’t like to admit it, Eddie’s a little squeamish about breaking rules, but he still finds himself nodding yes. He can’t believe how simple it is. They just walk out of the equipment shed and off the field, on to the sidewalk, where they keep going until they’re off campus completely.

“See? Easy,” says Richie, flashing him a triumphant smile. “Come on, I’m starving.”

He grabs Eddie’s wrist and drags him to a nearby bus stop. They take two seats at the very back of the bus, and as Eddie watches their redbrick campus fade into the distance, he has that same strange displacing feeling, like he can’t quite figure out how he was in a dusty shed five minutes ago, and now he’s sitting on a public bus with Richie, of all people, ditching in the middle of the afternoon like it's perfectly normal.

They get off the bus just outside the limits of the town, at the Derry Mall. Eddie can’t remember the last time he came here but Richie seems to know it like the back of his hand.

“Do you like Snow Junkie?” he asks, backpack thumping as he strides along.

“ _Snow_ Junkie?”

Richie grins. “It’s an ice cream parlour. Worst name in the world, right? Or the best, depending on which way you look at it.”

It’s almost empty at this time on a Friday afternoon. They order fries and disgustingly large pink and blue cotton candy shakes in plastic cups. Eddie hasn’t been allowed milkshakes since about the third grade, when his mom read in a health magazine that they make blood cells go stiff. It’s so sweet that he can practically feel his blood cells curdling as he takes his first sip.

“Your tongue’s gone blue, dude,” Richie laughs.

“Yours too,” says Eddie, and Richie sticks his tongue out, trying to see. He looks so different without his braces. The milkshake’s made his gleaming white teeth go a little blue too.

“So what’s your verdict?” Richie asks, dipping a French fry into the pink cream at the top of his shake.

“That’s severely gross,” says Eddie, before immediately trying it himself. It’s kind of delicious. “Verdict on what? This place? It’s… _sticky_.”

“Well, I actually meant on school, but I’ll make a mental note not to take you to any more sticky places. So your first week back – pretty hell, right?”

“I dunno. Maybe a little weird, I guess. It’s like I’m the new kid, but I’m not. Like I’ve come back and I still know where everything is and I know everyone’s names but so much has changed.”

“Like what? Still the same soul-sucking prison it’s always been if you ask me,” says Richie, but this isn’t quite what Eddie meant.

“Well, I guess lessons kinda suck,” Eddie shrugs, digging his straw into the blue ice cream at the bottom of his shake. “It’s only been a week and I’m already behind in math. It doesn’t help that every time I ask the teacher a question she just sighs at me like I’m a fucking nuisance dog or something.”

“Miss Bianchi? Yeah, total asshole.” Richie leans across the table and taps Eddie on the hand companionably, as though there could be any chance Eddie might be paying attention to something besides him. “I can help you with math, you know.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I’m kind of a genius.”

Eddie rolls his eyes. Clearly, Richie’s penchant for self-aggrandisement hasn’t tempered any.

Eddie lowers his gaze to the blue mush at the bottom of his cup. “That’s cool of you to offer. It’s just, I don’t… think I’d be able to help you with anything in return, is all.”

“I didn’t ask you to, did I?” says Richie, and Eddie might think he was being sharp if it weren’t for the half-smile on his face. He shoves his last handful of fries in his mouth and pushes the plastic basket away. “You done? Let’s get out of here. I wanna go to Android’s before it closes.”

It turns out Android’s is a video shop on the upper floor. There’s a big cardboard cut-out of Hannibal Lecter strapped to his gurney in one window, and one of Kevin Costner in the other, as if the store can’t quite decide what sort of identity it wants to go with.

Richie only seems interested in the horror movie section. He picks up one video called _All American Murder_ and another called _Frankenhooker_ and reads the summaries with rapt interest.

Eddie pokes around in the action section by the front, until he notices the shopkeeper eyeing them warily. He tries to look innocuous by picking up a copy of _Top Gun_. When he flips it over there’s a shirtless Tom Cruise playing volleyball on the back cover. _Top Gun_ is a pretty great movie, and Eddie isn’t sure how volleyball sells a video about US Navy fighter pilots, but he has to admit Tom’s sunburnt pecs are pretty impressive. He flexes his own skinny arm by his side and it barely twitches. Truly pathetic - and only destined to deteriorate further now he’s banned from sports.

“What’s that?” Richie appears behind him suddenly. “Oh, Tom Cruise. Lame. Eddie, come over here, I want to show you something.”

Eddie drops the video and allows himself to be dragged to the bottom of the long, narrow store. All the movies at this end are R-rated, their covers showing pictures of machine guns and busty women and, more often than not, Eddie Murphy.

There’s a curtained off area with a red sign: **_No Under 18s – Please Execute Discretion_**. Richie pretends to be interested in a copy of _Caddyshack_. When he’s checked that the shopkeeper isn’t looking, he pulls Eddie behind the curtain, into a dim and dingy little annexe.

Eddie assumes it’s a stockroom at first. Then he looks around, and notices the titles on the videos back here. _Satan’s Honey_ and _Carnal Crimes_ , _Vampyros Lesbos_ and _Chained Heat_. There’s even one called _Fingered_. That’s it, just _Fingered_.

“Have you ever been back here?” asks Richie, picking up a video called _Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers_ like it’s just some family-friendly blockbuster.

Eddie shakes his head, unable to tear his eyes away from a movie whose garish cover depicts a zombified German soldier pressing a woman’s head into a molten green lake. He doesn’t understand what kind of plot that could _have_.

There’s even a copy of _Lady Chatterley’s Lover_ , though the cover looks nothing like the one on the creased paperback his mom keeps on the bottom shelf of her nightstand.

“What are they? I don’t get it. Why are they behind a curtain? Why are there so many… humanoid aliens on the covers?”

“They’re just B movies,” Richie shrugs, but his mouth is fighting a wicked smirk. “It’s not real porn. Not like the on-demand shit you get in hotel rooms. Or cable TV, if you’re Bill Denbrough’s dad.” He drops his smile and blinks innocently when Eddie looks at him. “What? We saw him do it in middle school.”

“We probably shouldn’t be in here.”

“Oh come _on_.” Richie lifts a finger, poking Eddie’s cheek. “Are you going red, Kaspbrak? Has this offended your delicate sensibilities?”

Eddie might normally be annoyed, but Richie has a way of smiling at him that makes him feel like he’s in on the joke too.

“Fuck off, I’m not _delicate_ ,” he says, batting Richie’s hand away.

Richie grabs blindly for another video and waves it in Eddie’s face.

“What do you reckon, Eds? Think I should buy it? $13.99, what a steal! Only $13.99 for this _specimen_ of a man.”

It’s just a sleazy sci-fi, its cover a cast of painted Star Trek-style space explorers and alien creatures. It’s a little different from most of the other tapes, though. Half-naked ladies in varying states of surprise seem to be the standard design for the most part, but on this one it’s not just the women who are scantily clad. The man in the centre of the cover – presumably Alpha Productions’ disillusioning answer to James T. Kirk – is standing, meaty orange legs apart, in nothing but a space helmet and garish leather pants. His crotch bulges unnaturally. It is, quite frankly, a little alarming.

The skin on the back of Eddie’s neck prickles, and he flicks his eyes away quickly.

“I think you should probably put it down before you catch something,” he says, and Richie barks out a laugh.

Harsh synthetic light suddenly descends on them as the red curtain is yanked to one side, rattling its rings. The hulking shadow of the shopkeeper looms over them.

“I knew you two punks were up to something as soon as you walked in,” he growls. “Out! Now!”

“But I just wanted to buy a copy of _Invasion of the Love Drones_ ,” Richie says innocently.

“Out!”

“Sir, please, it’s for a school project. My dad gave me money!”

“ _Now_!” 

Richie’s laughter is so infectious that Eddie starts sniggering too. They stagger out of the store, only managing to stop laughing once they make it to the escalators, until Eddie looks at Richie’s face and cracks up all over again.

“Alright, who should we bother next?” Richie asks, hopping on to the escalator, face still flushed with amusement.

Eddie hesitates, following behind. “What time is it? I guess I should probably be getting back.”

Richie glances at his watch. He’s standing on the escalator with his back to the floor below, facing Eddie, though he doesn’t seem concerned that he might fall.

“Why? School finished, like, thirty minutes ago. You’re already late home. Might as well be super late, huh?”

It’s the kind of convenient logic Richie’s always specialised in. Normally Eddie might argue, but he already knows his mom won’t be home yet. Aunt Marie will be pinning rollers into her hair while they watch _Full House_ and shit-talk Aunt Liz.

He doesn’t mention this. He’d rather Richie believe he’s rebelling of his own free will.

And even if his mom doesn’t find out, there’s still a little thrill at the thought of doing something behind her back. Especially with Richie, a person she’s never really liked.

When they get to the bottom of the escalator, Richie tugs on Eddie’s wrist, leading him to a music shop. He’s always had that habit since they were kids, getting people to come in his direction by simply taking hold of their hand and making them.

It’s only been a week, but here’s Richie, taking hold of Eddie by the wrist and leading him in his ideal direction. And here’s Eddie, willingly following.

*

**January 2012**

It seems, in her final years, that Eddie’s mother developed a habit for extreme couponing. And stockpiling nail polish remover. And collecting ceramic chickens.

Nothing in life ever really prepares someone for clearing out their parents’ house. Eddie wishes there was some kind of instruction manual to consult. _Dealing with Your Dead Mom’s House for Dummies_ , or something.

He gets as far as sealing the living room junk into three huge cardboard boxes, but what now? There used to be a second-hand store on Center Street, but even if it still exists he simply cannot, with good conscience, dump thirty years of Sonia Kaspbrak’s porcelain poultry on their doorstep.

Just as he’s weighing up the pros and cons of eBay (pros: extra pocket money, cons: lugging all his mom’s shit back to New York) his phone buzzes with a text.

Richie. Again.

In a way, Eddie admires him. Not many people would continue to text over the course of twenty-four hours after receiving no reply the first three times.

He only glances at the text, his phone in one hand, a 1974 edition of _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ in the other. Then he gives it a second, proper look, just to check it says what he thinks it does.

**_Open your front door_ **

Then a smiley face.

Against perhaps his better judgement (after all, how many horror movies start like this?) Eddie drops the book in one of the boxes, goes out to the hallway, and opens the front door a couple of inches.

And there he stands. Richie, with an umbrella to protect his hair and expensive wool coat, looking so nonchalant he might as well be whistling.

“Oh good, it _is_ still this house,” he says brightly. “Sorry about the text. Thought I’d better check first, you know. Just in case.”

Eddie rests his head on the door frame. He’s grouchy, he’s hungry, and he’s covered in sneeze-inducing dust. And here comes Richie, who apparently uses copious amounts of hair product even when he’s at home with family for Christmas.

“What are you doing here?” Eddie asks, a little ungraciously, scrubbing a hand through his hair.

“What a warm welcome! Gee, I wish I’d brought homemade banana bread now.”

“Richie…”

Richie drops the act. “Well, you weren’t responding to my messages so you left me no choice but to go full _Fatal Attraction_ on your ass.”

“Right. And that isn’t creepy at all.”

“Well, _un_ -like Glenn Close, I’m not claiming to be pregnant, I won’t acid bomb your car, and I have no interest in consuming your pets.” Richie shrugs. “I just wanna hang out. I didn’t know when you’d be leaving. Didn’t wanna risk missing you.”

Eddie softens slightly.

“The thing is, Richie, I can’t really… hang out right now,” he says, like he’s twelve and Richie wants him to come on a bike ride so they can go catapult spitballs off a bridge. “I mean, I need to get back home as soon as possible and this house is like an episode of _Hoarders_ , so.”

“It’s cool,” Richie says lightly.

“Uh.”

“As in, I’ll help?”

He says this like it’s obvious. Like it’s why he’s here in the first place. Like if he steps to the side, he’ll have a little cleaning kit at his feet, ready to go.

“Oh God, I wasn’t hinting or anything,” Eddie says quickly. “I was just saying –”

“You were just saying you need to get back to New York and your mom’s house looks like Grey Gardens right now.” Richie collapses his umbrella and leaves it on the porch. “So let me help. Surely you’ll get it done quicker that way? Don’t worry, I know my shit. I got this terrible viral infection last year that had me chained to the sofa and I ended up watching, like, seventy episodes of _Clean House_.”

He smiles at him. Eddie hesitates. He isn’t quite sure why. It’s true that an extra pair of hands would help, but a large part of him doesn’t want Richie to see the state of the house. That’s not weird, is it? Being reluctant to let a celebrity, in an expensive jacket, witness a hoarder’s hovel?

“Sure is cold and wet out here,” Richie says cheerfully, so Eddie gives in and holds the door open for him.

Richie brushes past him. He smells of cold weather but, beneath that, an amazing musky aftershave.

Aftershave. Hair product. Why? Why not just spray a bit of deodorant under his arms like a normal person slumming it at home for the holidays?

Eddie feels somewhat under-dressed in his sweatpants and plain Henley, but it’s too late to do anything about it now.

“This place hasn’t changed at _all_ ,” says Richie, gazing around at the poky hall with its dull, beige wallpaper and thin carpet.

“You mean you actually remember it?”

“Of course I remember! It wasn’t _that_ long ago.”

Eddie clears his throat, glancing behind himself at the living room door. “Anyway, I was working on the front –”

“Where’s your room again? It’s this one, isn’t it?”

Eddie can’t pretend he isn’t slightly ruffled by Richie’s arrival – after all, he’s been completely alone in this empty house for over a day now, and it’s possible he hasn’t even heard the sound of his own voice until now – but it’s weirdly flattering too. Alright, Derry’s a small, boring, backwards town, but he’s pretty certain someone as flighty as Richie could think of more creative ways to spend his time than digging through decades-old junk around here.

The one room in the house his mom never changed is Eddie’s bedroom. It’s been preserved in time like a living museum. She never even switched out the bedding for guests, or stuffed winter coats into the closet, or took the G.I. Joes to a yard sale.

Richie doesn’t go in there without permission but Eddie concedes that it’s as good a room as any to clear out. Especially as it’s the one he’s been sleeping in while staying here. It’s only got a single bed, but the thought of sleeping in his mother’s double is too morbid, even with fresh sheets.

Both men simply stare at the room in silence for a moment when they go in. Until now, it’s just been a temporary hotel room for Eddie, but with Richie in here it’s taken on this new, strange atmosphere. Like it’s an actual bedroom again, and not just a job to be tackled.

“I guess I’m just tossing everything in boxes. Then I’ll figure out what to do with it all. Do you want, uh… coffee?”

“Coffee would be great.” Richie flashes him a smile as he shrugs off his coat. Thankfully, his clothes underneath are no more exotic than a plain sweater and jeans.

As Eddie waits for the coffee to brew, he checks his phone. He has a text from Aunt Marie, asking if she can have his mother’s Howdy Doody cookie jar. He ignores it for now, opening up a new message thread with Stan. He's the only person from Derry Eddie still speaks to – in part, because they both ultimately ended up in New York.

**_This place really doesn’t change. Jonsey is apparently immortal and still runs the Silver Dollar, it’s still pissing down with rain, and I’ve just run into Richie Tozier of all people…_ **

He puts his phone in his pocket while he pours the coffee out, but almost immediately Stan responds.

**_You’re kidding. Meaning he isn’t spending the holidays snorting coke off rent boys in The Viper Room?_ **

Harsh. But then, Stan’s never had time for celebrities. Or for Richie, in the end.

Richie’s sitting on the edge of the narrow bed, waiting patiently, when Eddie comes back with the coffee.

“Thanks,” he says, taking the offered mug. “Swear I wasn’t slacking. I just didn’t wanna start touching anything without your permission.”

Which is sort of sweet, Eddie supposes. He sits down next to him.

“It’s fine, touch whatever you want. I took all the gory stuff with me when I moved out. You won’t find any secret diaries or dirty magazines.”

“Oh, I’ll go then.”

“Sorry to disappoint you.”

Richie grins around a sip of his drink. “Got any music to help us along?”

Eddie rummages around in the nightstand, producing a handful of cracked, dusty CDs.

“Uh, let’s see… The Cranberries, Third Eye Blind, R.E.M. or Sheryl Crow. Any of those tickle your fancy?”

“Damn, Kaspbrak, I don’t remember your taste in music being quite _so_ bad.”

“Um, fuck you? _Automatic for the People_ is a classic, it got me through senior year!” Eddie clears his throat awkwardly, realising a second too late what he’s said. He dumps the CDs in Richie’s lap. “Here. Might as well start by tossing those on the burn pile.”

They work in companionable semi-silence instead, broken only by the odd utterance of _God, I remember these things_ or _why do you have two copies of Urban Cowboy?_ or _d’you think this Moxie’s expired?_

Richie is actually surprisingly helpful. He’s also a lot taller – and can lift significantly larger boxes – than Eddie. After a while, his presence stops being quite so surreal, and is just plain convenient.

“Help me pull the bed away from the wall?” Eddie says at one point, and Richie turns where he’s standing, grabs the wooden plinth of the bed and casually yanks it a full three feet from the wall, like he’s tugging a paper towel.

The scene his easy strength uncovers isn’t pretty.

“ _That_ , my friend,” says Richie, dusting his hands off, “is gross.”

“Oh, like your childhood bedroom was any better? Pretty sure you were growing penicillin in your sock drawer throughout most of middle school.”

Eddie’s mother was a fastidious cleaner, and despite all the clutter, the house is spotless. Except for this room. She must have stopped coming in after he left home, if the inch-thick dust beneath the bed is anything to go by.

There’s stuff under the bed. Plastic storage boxes, a lop-sided old teddy bear, a pair of grubby sneakers with the laces missing.

“ _Cute_ , Eddie,” Richie says gleefully, grabbing the bear. “What’s his name? Oh no, he’s got an arm missing. Poor little amputee.” He makes the bear wave at Eddie with its remaining limb.

“What was that thing you used to keep under your pillow?” Eddie asks, pretending to think. “That woolly, bacteria-filled thing that was supposed to resemble a bunny..?”

“Alright, alright –”

“You know, the one you forgot to bring to that sleepover in, like, third grade and cried about so your mom had to come and pick you up?”

“Don’t talk about Henri, please, it’s a sensitive subject.”

“ _Henri_. That was it. Because your parents got him from an art gallery in Paris.”

Richie spins the bear in his hands, a strange smile on his face. “How do you remember all this stuff? I’m lucky if I remember what I had for dinner two nights –” His phone begins to vibrate in his pocket, interrupting him. When he pulls it out and looks at the name on the screen, his expression shifts. “Sorry, hold on, I need to take this.”

He passes the bear to Eddie and leaves the room, already answering the call before the door has closed.

Eddie knows he shouldn’t eavesdrop, so he tosses the bear on the Throw pile and busies himself with the plastic storage boxes. They’re both filled with total junk. Tatty paperbacks and old receipts and odd socks and broken toys he’d probably been trying to hide from his mother. He doesn’t understand why he kept so much ruined stuff. A yo-yo without the string, a book with the glue unstuck at the spine. There’s even a plastic cassette with all its slippery tape yanked out.

Eddie up-ends the whole box on to the Throw pile. The cassette tape lands on its opposite side, at the top of the heap. _Mixtape 2.0_ is written on the paper label in thick black handwriting.

He looks at it for a second. Then he picks it up, flipping it over and back again, the unspooled tape dangling all the way to the floor. As he studies it, a strange sensation snakes round his stomach like a vine, pleasant and unpleasant at the same time. Richie’s handwriting, scrawled with a thick black Sharpie that was otherwise used exclusively for vandalising phone booths and school books.

“Sorry about that.” Richie bursts into the room, sliding his phone back into his pocket.

Without thinking, Eddie yanks open the drawer of the nightstand and tosses the cassette tape inside, shutting it away in one fluid motion.

“You okay?” asks Richie, standing in the middle of the room.

“Uh-huh.” Eddie spins to look at him. “Are you?”

“Oh yeah, I just had to – my agent called about an audition, that’s all.” Before Eddie can ask, Richie goes on, “I didn’t realise how late it was until I looked at my phone. What do you think about calling it quits for the day and heading out for something to eat? I’m starving, aren’t you?”

It’s only when Richie says this that Eddie realises he hasn’t eaten since breakfast, and that was just a piece of toast. He gives the plastic storage box a gentle kick back under the bed.

An evening out hasn't exactly been on his agenda, but besides half a loaf of bread and some coffee there’s no food in the house, so Eddie nods, wiping his dusty hands on his shirt.

“Give me ten minutes to shower? Make that twenty actually, the shower in this place is an unreliable piece of shit at the best of times.” He pauses on his way to the door, tapping his fingers on the frame a little awkwardly. “Uh, Richie? Thanks for helping me today. It was kind of strange having the _Morning Takeover_ host emptying my desk drawers, but I appreciate it.”

“Eddie,” says Richie, and he’s smiling, but it’s a slightly confused smile if Eddie is reading it correctly. “Okay, yeah, it’s true, I’m a hugely successful, handsome and popular television and radio presenter, but… we’re friends, right? I mean, I know it’s been years but…”

Eddie looks at him. He isn’t quite sure what to say. It somehow doesn’t feel right to agree. It doesn’t seem right to disagree either.

So he just scoffs, “Take it easy, man, you’re not _that_ popular,” even though that’s not true either.

If Richie notices that Eddie’s dodged the question, he doesn’t mention it. For someone who talks for a living, it seems he’s pretty good at keeping quiet too.

*

They end up at a bar, rather than a restaurant, with mozzarella sticks and chicken wings in lieu of proper food. It doesn’t matter. Since he got to Derry last week, Eddie’s been getting through the days with intermittent snacking rather than actual meals.

Like a normal person, Richie eats finger food with his fingers. Eddie asks for a fork.

Richie gazes around himself as they sit at the bar. “Is it just me, or is this whole town stuck in a time warp? I swear that RoboCop machine was here in ’94.”

“I don’t know who thought a dive bar was the perfect environment for an arcade game where the sole objective is to run down the street beating the shit out of people,” says Eddie.

“ _Part man, part machine, all game_ ,” Richie says, in a spot-on impression of a Don LaFontaine action movie trailer. “Man, this place is fucking tragic.”

But he says this fondly, like somehow he wouldn’t rather be anywhere else.

“So,” Richie continues, picking up his beer. “Let’s talk about you. We haven’t even caught up properly yet. Tell me what’s in New York.”

“Pollution and gentrification, mostly.”

“And a job, I assume?”

 _Jobs_ plural, Eddie thinks, but doesn’t say.

“I work in hospitality,” he says instead, which is his stock answer whenever questions of his career path come up. “It won’t be forever, but I’m kind of deciding what I wanna do next.”

“That’s exciting,” Richie says, thankfully not pushing for details. “And are you – do you have a partner? Or something?”

“Or something?”

“I don’t know. Significant other? Secret lover? Sugar daddy?” He pauses. “Sugar baby?”

Eddie scoffs. “No, unfortunately I’m between sugar daddies and secret lovers at the moment.”

“I hate when that happens.”

“I had a, uh… well, I was in a long-term relationship which ended last year. So I’m just sort of getting used to living alone again, you know? Killing my own spiders, fixing my own leaks. A couple months ago I had to Google the make and model of my air conditioner for the first time in I don’t know how long.”

“How long is ‘long-term’?”

Eddie sucks in a breath. “Six years?”

“Oh, damn! You meant _long_ -term long-term.”

“Could’ve been longer, I guess, if we’d carried on with things. It was me who ended it. It was just getting… I don’t know. A little unhealthy, towards the end.” He wonders why he’s giving so much away when he doesn’t even have the excuse of being drunk yet, and shuts himself up with a swig of his beer. “Anyway, I’m working on making that ancient history, so. What about you? Any ‘or something’ in your life? I guess I could pull up Wikipedia but that shit always seems to be out of date before it’s even on there.”

“No need. Apparently I’m dating an _America’s Got Talent_ contestant that I’ve never even met. I’ve heard we’re very happy together, though.”

“Now _that_ would drive me insane.”

Richie shrugs, pulling a mozzarella stick apart with his fingers. “You get used to it. It’s kind of funny really. Besides, there’s more important things to worry about than how low TMZ thinks my standards are.” He goes to sip his beer, stopping to add, “Or how low they think the other guy’s are.”

His first instance of humility, if it can be called that. Eddie raises his eyebrows in surprise.

“So that’s a no for the significant other, then?”

“For now,” Richie nods, looking down at his drink. “I know it’s a cliché, but it’s difficult to balance my job with any kind of semi-consistent social life. Family always seems to take a backseat, even when I don’t want it to.”

“I’ll bet. What was it you said? Twelve Christmases since you were here last?”

“Yep. Last time I was here at Christmas it was Maggie and Went’s Millennium Bash. Dad started a firework battle with the neighbours and sent their goddamned fence up in flames. By accident. I think.”

“Never had your dad down as a nightmare neighbour. Any life-endangering incidents this year?”

“Not unless you count my mom yelling at my dad on Christmas Eve because he said _It’s a Wonderful Life_ sucked harder than _Jingle All the Way_. It was less physically threatening than pyromania, but somehow scarier.”

Eddie laughs, and Richie gives him this pleased smile. It might have been called smug, were it not for the warmth behind it.

Before long, their bottles are empty and new drinks have taken their place. Soon, two more replace those. They talk for a long time, their back-and-forth easy and relaxed now, unlike the night they bumped into each other at The Three Tides.

They talk about the town, mostly, and about the cities they ended up in, and about their families. They barely mention high school, except to reminisce on the time a raccoon got stuck in the air vents, but they talk about middle school a lot – Bill Denbrough falling down two flights of stairs in front of Beverly Marsh, Stan choosing Mick Jagger as his topic for their Historical Figures project and attempting to chicken walk on to stage while ‘Start Me Up’ played on his boombox. They end up laughing so much they have tears in their eyes, though whether that’s because their insubstantial meal has made the booze hit quicker, or whether it all really is that funny, Eddie couldn’t say.

“Want another?” Richie asks, gesturing to their bottles which are dwindling again.

“Fuck it, I’m on vacation,” says Eddie.

It’s the first time he’s felt semi-normal since Aunt Marie rang him the day before Christmas Eve and told him his mom was about to die, enough that he doesn’t really care what state of hungover he might end up being in tomorrow.

He’s not quite so tipsy that he can’t recognise, however, the absurdity of the fact that it’s Richie – _Richie_ – who’s managed to make him feel this way.

“This is all a little surreal, isn’t it?” says Richie, once the barman slides two more bottles their way. “Us, sitting here like we haven’t just spent nearly twenty years doing our own thing.”

“Uh, fucking _yeah_ it is.”

“It's weird how you still look the same. I mean, obviously you don't, but you do? Your nose and all around it, though, that used to be crazy freckly.” Richie moves his finger in a circular motion, close to Eddie’s face. He’s smiling, his other hand propping up his chin on the bar. “They’re gone now.”

Eddie shrugs, a little stiffly. “Guess I don’t spend enough time in the sun.”

“You should,” says Richie, and it’s such a tiny, simple thing to say, and it shouldn’t hold any weight in the way that it somehow does. He holds Eddie’s gaze, dropping his hand to his knee which is gently brushing Eddie’s beneath the bar top.

Neither of them speak, but something passes in their shared look. Eddie’s blood thrums with it. Maybe that’s just the alcohol slicking his throat. He suddenly has the irrepressible urge to pee.

“Be right back,” he says, sliding off the bar stool and cutting straight through the tension in the process.

When he returns, he watches from across the room as Richie chats easily with the barman. Not drunk, or irritating, or obnoxious. He’s making the barman laugh, even though the guy’s double Richie’s age and mostly mute.

Richie’s always been like that, even when they were younger. Even when he _was_ obnoxious, he could still win just about anyone over.

He looks _good_ these days too. Not hench or injected or suspiciously immaculate. But firm, tall, sharp-edged.

Eddie shakes his head, as though to shake the thought completely. He doesn’t want Richie to look good. He wants to feel justified for all the times he scoffed at a picture of him in a magazine, or flicked the radio off midway through his breakfast show. Part of him wants to not like Richie at all. But it’s difficult.

They drink one more round before slipping out into the cold night. Eddie’s house isn’t far, and Richie’s parents’ place only a little further beyond, but they meander, stopping every few minutes to point out an old friend’s house, or a store that’s changed its name, or a telephone wire someone’s gym shoes once got hung from.

For years, Eddie’s tried not to let memories of Derry take up space in his head. He's forced them to inhabit a different compartment in his brain altogether. One with a padlock snapped to it. Now it’s been prised open, spilling out street names and store fronts and houses with neat front lawns everywhere. And Richie.

They chatter as they walk, but Eddie’s only half engaged, autopilot mode kicking in as the inevitable arrival back at his house hangs over him. Part of him wants to get in and close the door, draw the curtains and be alone with his thoughts so he can have his nightly existential crisis in peace.

The other part of him finds the thought of another night alone in that awful, quiet house so depressing he has half a mind to ask Richie in. He’s pretty sure there’s something in the cupboards they could pilfer, some whiskey or Cognac or something. They could dust it off and put out some blankets in the living room. They could –

“Listen, sorry for kind of forcing you to hang out with me today. But – well, I’m glad I did,” says Richie, arm brushing Eddie’s as they draw up the path towards the house.

“Me too. I think I thought maybe I wanna be alone, but now I’m not sure I do,” says Eddie, stopping in front of the door.

He doesn’t know where to look now they’re standing still, so he looks at the ground. His fingertips buzz with something. And his toes, and his chest. He knows Richie is looking at him, he can feel it, but if he makes eye contact then he knows, instinctively, that something will happen.

He drags his eyes up to meet Richie’s anyway, despite this. Or maybe because of it.

Eddie opens his mouth to say something – God knows what – when Richie leans in closer and kisses him.

The second their mouths meet, Richie’s hands are up and around him, pulling Eddie in. Eddie clings back without even thinking.

It isn’t their first kiss, but it’s the first they’ve shared in two decades, and while it’s familiar it’s also got a different kind of strength behind it. Richie isn’t hesitant, tugging at Eddie’s jacket, sliding his hand to curl around the back of Eddie’s head, his fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck. Perhaps it’s because he’s a little drunk. They both are. Eddie lets his arms loop around Richie’s neck as Richie gently pushes him back so he’s leaning against the porch post. Whatever expensive product Richie’s used has worn off, so that the hair Eddie scrunches his fingers into is soft and curly.

Richie shifts his head to nose at Eddie’s jaw, kissing his neck. It’s difficult to think clearly when that’s going on, but Eddie manages to regain clarity long enough to muster up a feeble protest.

“Rich, I think this is probably…” _Not a good idea_ , is what he tries to get out, but alcohol has taken possession of his tongue and the words won’t come. He lets his head fall back against the post, exposing more of his neck.

“Gonna invite me in, then?” Richie says in a warm whisper, and Eddie finally snaps out of it.

“No, I – no.”

He pushes Richie away, and it’s only a very gentle push, but Richie flashes him a thoroughly confused look all the same.

For some reason, the expression annoys Eddie. He readjusts his jacket, and tries to ignore the fact he might need to readjust his jeans too.

“No, I’m – I’m not doing this right now, Richie.”

Richie nods contemplatively, leaning against the porch post that, just moments ago, he had Eddie pressed against like something out of _The Notebook_. “Is it because you feel weird about the house?”

Eddie stares at him incredulously. “Right. It _must_ be a problem with the house, because it couldn’t _possibly_ be the fact that I don’t want to sleep with you.”

“I didn’t mean –”

“God. I can’t even fathom what it must be like to be so used to getting what you want that you think the only thing that could come between you and a potential conquest is a dead woman’s bungalow.”

“Eddie…”

Even Eddie is surprised at how quickly his rage has flared up. Although if he’s honest with himself, it’s been bubbling beneath the surface the entire time he’s been in Derry.

“This was a dumb idea, I don’t know why I thought we could…” He rubs his hands over his face, like he’s trying to knead out the frustration. When he drops them, Richie is looking at him with those big, dark eyes, like a kicked dog. “Why you? Of all the people I have to run into in this shitty town, which fucking planet went into retrograde to make sure it would be you?”

Richie looks away from him, down the long, dark street. “Do you want me to go?”

And even with all the irritation and frustration and utter fucking _sadness_ spilling over inside of him, Eddie still has to think about his answer.

“I think that would be best,” he settles on, as maturely as possible.

The problem with telling people to leave is that they usually tend to do it. When Eddie gets inside the house, the silence rings in his ears. He sits on the bed in his old room, waiting for his phone to buzz. Hoping that it doesn’t, wishing that it would. He wants Richie to come back. He wants desperately for him to just stay away.

And isn’t that how he’s always lived? Never one thing, and never the other; a way to make sure that he’s always, always wanting for something.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for sexual content, alcohol.

**September 1992**

School doesn’t exactly get easier. Eddie still finds himself stumbling through classes and ducking his head against derision in the hallways, but at least being friends with Richie gives the whole thing a new, more tolerable dimension.

They don’t really talk much at school. They don’t have many classes together, and besides, lunch is a no-go zone. The cafeteria seating plan and hierarchy has been established too long now for Eddie to try to get a place at Richie’s table, where everyone is shiny-haired and Tommy Hilfiger-clad and strangely pimple-free.

But Friday afternoons with Richie follow a pattern. As soon as the bell rings for last period they meet like a couple of black-and-white movie mobsters about to strike some clandestine deal. They go up past the sports fields, slip out the back gates together, and make the short trip to Eddie’s house, only ever stopping on the way to load up on junk food at The Soda Hut.

“I saw on _Rise & Shine_ that junk food can lead to general cognitive decline,” Richie tells him that first Friday they trudge up the gravel path to Eddie’s house, crunching Doritos, “but I prefer to utilise it as a tool for positive association. Meaning when you think of algebra homework, you’ll think of Skittles.”

At first, Eddie wasn’t going to take up Richie’s “tutoring” offer at all. It was too shameful. Then one traumatic Wednesday morning Miss Bianchi called on him to tell the class what _y_ equalled, and Eddie panicked and blurted out a letter instead of a number. Not even a letter used for algebraic equations. He said _f_. So although the thought of Richie politely sitting through an hour of Eddie sighing and chewing his pencil and erasing the pages of his math book till they tear is pretty terrible, Miss Bianchi’s expression, and everyone else’s laughter, is distinctly more mortifying.

Friday is a deliberate choice. If there’s one thing Eddie’s mother is committed to, it’s her Friday nights at Aunt Marie’s. She never comes home earlier than eight p.m., and it’s the only time Eddie can get Richie in the house. His mom’s never liked Richie much. Not since they were nine years old and he accidentally kicked Eddie’s bottom tooth out attempting to backflip on Bolton Skipper’s trampoline. They’d been trying to qualify for the 1984 Olympics. Eddie had been pretty distraught to not only lose a tooth, but to later find out from the dentist that trampolining wasn’t even an Olympic sport.

“Okay, _so_ ,” Richie says, the third time they convene at Eddie’s place on a Friday afternoon. He dumps his backpack on Eddie’s floor and jumps back on the bed so hard it squeaks disconcertingly. “I’ve noticed your enthusiasm has been slowly dying the past couple of weeks, so I thought I’d bring you a little incentive.”

He produces a lurid orange VHS tape whose front cover depicts a mass of painted zombies. One of them has a gun, which seems entirely at odds with the idea of zombies as witless anthropoids, but absolutely the type of thing that Richie would enjoy.

“What’s the incentive? If I don’t do my homework, the zombie hordes will devour me?” Eddie deadpans.

“ _Exactly_. No, actually, I figured we could watch it if we get your work done with at least –” Richie flips the tape over to check the running time, “One hundred and three minutes to spare before your mom comes home. Call it one hundred and five, so I have time to grab my shit and skedaddle. We can’t let Mrs K see her son being corrupted by the cannibalistic undead and quadratic equations.”

Eddie sighs – but it’s a determined sigh.

“Alright. Deal. I’m coming for those fucking zombies.”

As it turns out, he isn’t coming for anything. And if his enthusiasm has been slowly dying over the past fortnight, it’s now stone cold in the ground.

Just twenty minutes in and Eddie’s already lost any hope of seeing zombies blasting themselves into the air with the kickback of a machine gun. When Richie very gently points out that he’s made a mistake on question five, Eddie sighs and kicks his math book closed with his socked foot.

“Alright, fuck this, it’s hopeless.”

“ _Chill_ , compadre.”

Richie grabs Eddie’s hand and eases the pencil away from him, like he’s afraid Eddie might stab something with it. He twirls it the right way up and opens Eddie’s book again, rolling back on to his stomach. Richie never bothers with the desk. He prefers to sprawl his long limbs everywhere like a sloth.

“Okay, right. Ignore that one, it’s dumb. Let’s do the next one. Are you looking? Eddie, dude, look at it. What’s the first thing you need to do here?”

Eddie glances down at the page petulantly, arms folded. “Isolate the _x_ ,” he mumbles.

“Right. So to do that, the first thing we need to do is get rid of this little bitch, the five. Yeah? And remember you have to do the opposite thing, right? So if we subtract both sides by five –”

“Richie – I can’t do it. You might as well save your breath.”

Richie sighs, sitting back on his haunches, giving Eddie’s arm a tiny push with the back of his hand.

“Come on, Eds, it’s easy once –”

“Easy for _you_. I’m a lost cause. I mean, I go through the steps like you say to do… and then I’m left with this huge jumble of numbers that gets messier and messier the more I try. It’s like my brain just stops connecting the dots.” Eddie gives a sigh of his own. “When I was being taught at home, math was _nothing_ like this.”

Richie carefully uncurls his long legs, abandoning the pencil and book to one side. “Did you… I mean, you must have had a teacher, right?”

Eddie shrugs. “Depends what your definition of ‘teacher’ is.” When Richie quirks a brow, he explains, “I had a tutor but she was a total weirdo. She was just this lady my mom knew from Bingo. I mean, she was accredited and everything. Just, you know, a complete wackjob. Her version of a science lesson was watching Bill Nye and making a sundial. Mike Hanlon, the kid from the sheep farm? He gets taught by his _grandparents_ , and his grades are _still_ a hundred times better than mine.”

“But that’s nuts,” Richie laughs, almost like he doesn’t believe him. “Don’t they check up on you? Come knocking with their government spies, make sure it’s all being done by the book? My cousin was home-schooled for a year ‘cause he kept trying to set people’s hair on fire.”

“They _do_ check up on you. Why d’you think I had to come back to school in the end?”

“Oh.”

Eddie can recall it vividly; the phone calls and letters demanding timetables and tutor details, not to mention a maintained portfolio of test results and academic records. Then came the tall, sharp man from the school district in spring, the strained conversation over cookies and weak coffee about how Eddie wasn’t making progress, about how the local superintendent would have to intervene.

Richie must sense the sudden turn in Eddie’s mood because he places his hand very gently on Eddie’s arm. Eddie isn’t expecting it and startles slightly. Richie’s fingers are warm, and a little rough, and because Eddie isn’t used to being touched by other people he feels a kind of fizz in his spine.

“Hey,” Richie says quietly, drawing closer. “Look, forget the homework, okay? Let’s just watch the movie.”

“I’m not being graded on the undead and gratuitous violence, Richie.”

“Yeah, but only one of these things is gonna cheer you up right now.” He grabs the math book and gives it a little shake. “And I don’t think it’s _this_.” Then he drags his backpack over and unzips it. Without even hesitating, he drops Eddie’s book inside.

“What are you doing?” Eddie asks, alarmed.

“I’ll do it for you this weekend. Give it you Monday morning.”

“But… _why_?”

“Because why should you have to do something you hate for people you don’t like? Besides, Bianchi won’t know the difference, I can forge your chicken scratch no problem. Why are you looking at me like that? Doesn’t this solve the issue?” Richie picks up the movie and the nearest bag of Soda Hut candy. “You get your homework done, and we get to rot our juvenile brains with garbage for four hours.”

“Yeah, but…”

“Don’t _worry_ so much, Kaspbrak.” Richie reaches out and pushes Eddie’s pursed lips up into a smile with his finger, and that brings back the sort of fizzy spine feeling. “Where does it get you, huh? It’s just a big long road to nowhere.”

It must be nice living in Richie’s brain sometimes, with thoughts like that. Eddie spends half the horror movie sneaking sideways glances at him, as if he might be able to absorb Richie’s cheerfully reckless attitude by osmosis.

At one point, Richie catches him looking and pulls a hideous face. Eddie pulls one back, and it must be pretty gross because Richie tips his head back with a loud laugh. He looks at Eddie again, and the laugh dissolves into a soft grin – just as, on screen, a zombie’s head explodes in a shower of acid green goo.

*

Being at Richie’s house is different.

There’s no time limit, for one. All Eddie has to do is tell his mom he’s studying plant anatomy at Stan’s house and, if Richie isn’t held by some prior commitment to his gang of errant friends, the two of them can while away whole Saturdays glued to MTV, or listening to Richie’s music, or battling vampires and dragons in _Final Fantasy_.

Sometimes they lounge about in the Toziers’ green, manicured garden, lying on their backs, swapping A-Zs of life while the last of the summer gradually fizzles out into Fall.

“I’m glad you two are friends again,” Richie’s mother says, unprompted, one Saturday evening when they’re in the kitchen trying to make cheesy popcorn out of Dorito dust. She’s pretty and petite, like a TV mom, with Richie’s dark hair and eyes. “Of course, it would be nice if Richie could try cleaning his room _before_ inviting you round, Eddie. That really would be swell.”

“It’s clean, Ma,” Richie grunts, using a potato masher to grind the Doritos in a Ziploc bag. They’re making considerably slow progress.

“Sorry, honey, you’re right. I did notice you’d kicked some of the detritus from the floor under your desk.”

Richie rolls his eyes, and his mom doesn’t say a word. Just rolls her own right back. If Eddie rolled his eyes at his mother (where she could see him do it, that is – he does it plenty when she can’t) she’d screw her face up and refuse to speak to him all evening. But nobody in Richie’s family seems to take much of anything seriously. Only a few days ago his dad came bursting through the front door, spluttering, “Rich, did you take my power drill to fix your bike _again_? I should knock your damn forehead off, kid,” but when Eddie turned around, he saw that Richie’s dad was laughing.

Eddie has always liked Mr Tozier. He’s funny and cheerful, tall like Richie, and scruffily handsome behind his glasses. He lets Eddie and Richie rifle through his vinyl records in the den, and splashes thimblefuls of whiskey into their Cokes when they’re watching a movie.

“He thinks if he gives me things willingly I won’t seek them out illicitly,” Richie says on one occasion. He always seems vaguely embarrassed by his father, like a kids TV presenter has forced entry into their home and is refusing to stop doing magic tricks.

In fact, the only aspect of his dad which Richie seems proud to discuss is his impressive music collection. He’s got tonnes of old vinyl from the ‘60s and ‘70s. Eddie only recognises the really famous names like The Beatles and Led Zeppelin. Richie is aghast when Eddie admits he doesn’t know The Clash or Blondie or The Velvet Underground. Patiently, somehow without even a hint of veiled snobbery, Richie plays them for him, easing them out of their paper casings like holy relics, lifting the needle of the record player as if it’s as fragile as a spider’s web.

“It must be cool being able to share music with your dad,” Eddie remarks once. “We have a box of my dad’s old records in the attic, but they’re just jazz and big band and weird comedy shit.”

“I don’t know about sharing,” says Richie. He’s lying on his stomach in the den, flicking through the sleeve photographs of a Queen album. “It’s pretty much a one way street. I like a lot of his music – I mean, not _all_ of it, ‘cause he listens to a lot of Gordon Lightfoot – but he hates more or less all of mine. Says it’s like a suicidal ambulance siren.”

If Richie’s dad’s music is a little foreign to Eddie, Richie’s music is practically extra-terrestrial. His white bedroom walls are plastered with posters for bands with weird, punchy names and dour expressions. Sonic Youth. Jane’s Addiction. The Smashing Pumpkins. They all have names that don’t seem to mean anything – except to Richie, for whom they clearly mean the world.

The Pixies are his favourite. A huge poster of them takes pride of place above the frequently unmade bed. He solemnly tells Eddie that the debate over whether to prefix ‘Pixies’ with ‘the’ is as yet unresolved.

“They just know exactly what I need when I need it. You know?” he says, and Eddie nods without even considering what this actually means, only aware that it sounds like it means something important.

Listening to the Pixies one drizzly Sunday night, toe to toe at either end of Richie’s bed, Eddie leans his head back and closes his eyes, letting the sugar snort riffs and howling monotones wash over him. It’s weird; he doesn’t feel uncomfortable doing this with Richie, even though he hasn’t lain on a bed with someone else since – well, probably _ever_ , which is kind of strange to think about. Eddie doesn’t feel like he has to say anything. At the same time, he feels free to speak whatever nonsense comes into his head. Richie is quite frequently a big ball of vibrating energy, but somehow Eddie feels calm.

Perhaps thinking Eddie doesn’t like the music, Richie sits up to change the CD. Eddie stops him with a foot on his arm.

“No – don’t.”

The look Richie gives him from the other side of the bed is so gratified. Relieved, even. It’s like he’s introduced Eddie to an old friend, and they’ve immediately hit it off.

*

Eddie’s mother once said she always wanted a Virgo, not a Scorpio, and that’s why she’s glad her only son was born prematurely.

Ever since she told him this when he was nine, spoon poised over his Cap’n Crunch, Eddie’s always been slightly obsessed with the idea that he’s bound to a personality he was never supposed to have; that if he had just been allowed to incubate in the womb for a few more weeks, he might be brave and bolshy and dynamic, even romantic, and not petty or anxious or scrupulous to the point of exhaustion.

“It’s why you hate being teased,” Aunt Marie told him once. She’s obsessed with astrology too. “All Virgos hate being teased. They’re a very uptight breed. Not like us Cancers.”

She and his mother are both Cancers. They have matching Cancer coffee mugs listing all their supposedly best traits: _persistent_ , _intuitive_ , _tenacious_ , _family-oriented_. But the connotations are neutral, Eddie notices. After all, _tenacious_ could describe Mother Teresa as well as Joseph Stalin. He pointed this out once, and was met with stony silence.

Aunt Marie also puts her nephew’s scrawniness down to his prematurity, and is vocal about it. In freshman year, when other boys were starting to become so bulky that their bodies were at odds with any sense of gravity, Eddie was checking biology books in the library for reassurance that his height was not abnormal. His growth spurt last summer was a relief but it’s only relative, since all the other boys have had growth spurts too.

The ironic thing is, he’s nearly always the eldest in his class. Only a few weeks of school have passed before his birthday rolls around. He lies in bed the night before, mind swimming as he tries desperately to figure out where seventeen whole years have gone, and what he’s done with them. In the morning, his mother puts ice cream on his waffles and tells him he can skip school.

“I thought we could have a nice day together, just the two of us.” She looks so hopeful that the thought of refusing her already makes Eddie feel guilty.

He doesn’t particularly want to skip. He has history first thing, no math, and Stan’s promised him homemade apple cake at lunch.

“Won’t it look a little suspicious if I’m not in school?” he asks, toying with his waffles.

“We’ll say you have a stomach bug.”

“On my birthday.”

“Yes, sweetie, it’s a shame. Everyone’ll feel real sorry for you, I’m sure.”

She says this like she’s actually conjured the stomach bug into existence. He must look uncertain, though, because she suddenly frowns and slams the jug she’s drying so hard on the kitchen draining board that Eddie drops his fork.

“I see. You don’t want to spend the day with me. That’s fine. Totally fine! You never want to spend time with me anymore so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“Mom –”

“Off all hours doing God knows what with kids from that _school_.” She always says it that way. _That school_. Like she’s talking about a toxic waste pile. “Can’t even spare me a weekend, never mind your birthday.”

“Mom, listen –”

“Don’t mind your mother, Eddie, she’ll just sit here and rot –”

“Look, I’ll stay home, alright? I’ll stay home!” He says it louder than he means to, standing up out of his seat slightly. “I want to, okay?”

They stare at each other for a moment. His mother wrings the dish towel in her hands, grudgingly resistant.

“Well, I wouldn’t want you to put yourself out,” she mutters, turning back to the sink. _Dependable_ , her Cancer mug says on the breakfast table. _Nurturing_.

The day drags by. They watch _Barry Lyndon_ , because it’s Eddie’s favourite, then _Flashdance_ , because it’s hers. Eddie watches the hours tick by, figuring out which classes he should be in at which time. History at nine. He’s been looking forward to handing in his essay on the Olmecs. Now he might get marked down for it being late. They’re supposed to be starting _The Crucible_ in English. That’s at eleven. And Stan will be looking for him at lunch. He’s not stupid, he’ll know Eddie isn’t really sick. Will he tell someone? No, he isn’t like that. He’s always been kinder than other people really deserve.

Eddie thinks about Stan’s birthday. He dozes in the living room armchair to foggy memories of snowman building, the smell of a gas heater at sleepovers, hot latkes with applesauce. January. He works it out in his head; Stan is an Aquarius. Thoughtful, steadfast, fair Aquarius.

Of course, none of it means anything really. Eddie tries to resist his mother’s passion for pseudoscience. He prefers disciplines that are embedded in facts, like history. Things he can know with certainty and keep locked in his head, reassured that they won’t change.

His Aunt Marie comes for dinner that night and brings him a book on the Salem Witch Trials for his birthday, a topic no doubt chosen deliberately to toe the line between his love for the past and the sisters’ shared fixation on all things abstract or mystical.

“You’ve lost weight,” she tells him, rather accusingly, at the table. “How can he have lost _more_ weight, Sonia? Don’t they feed them in public school?”

“Oh God, he takes his lunch to school, Mar. You think I’d let him eat what they’re serving up? That garbage is full of chemicals.” Eddie’s mother is obsessed with the idea of chemicals. There is, as far as she’s concerned, no such thing as a good or natural one; only ones that cause defects in her child. “One bite of that acid red slop they call pizza and you’re looking at hormone disruption, ADHD, cancer – I mean, the list goes on. I saw it on _Sally_.”

Eddie knows he hasn’t lost weight. In fact, stripped down to his underwear in front of the bathroom mirror only a few nights ago, he’d been cheered to discover that he’s actually put some on. His t-shirt sleeves fit snugger around the top of his arms, the waistband of his jeans no longer folds in at the back. And yet, one snide remark from his aunt and he almost feels like his clothes are swamping him again.

He has two helpings of birthday cake after dinner, just to make them both happy. Aunt Marie tuts and tells him the sugar will rot the teeth in his head.

*

“Eddie! Where were you yesterday?”

Richie really must be pleased to see him, because he hardly ever approaches Eddie in school. Not when the hallways are busy. It’s something Eddie is aware of but chooses to disregard, putting it down to the fact that Richie is invariably late in the mornings.

“I was sick,” says Eddie, pulling his biology textbook from his locker.

“On your birthday? Shame, buddy.” Clearly, Richie knows it’s bullshit. “Well, can I still come round tonight? You know, if you’re feeling _better_ and all. I need to give you your present.”

It’s Friday. His mom suggested Eddie take today off too, make a long weekend of it. She pointed out that it would make his sickness seem more realistic. Eddie was determined not to spend another day watching _Ricki Lake_ in the grey gloom of the house and wolfed down his breakfast, bolting out the door this morning before his mother could start another argument.

“You got me a present?”

“Yeah, adorable, aren’t I?” Richie leans against the locker beside Eddie’s, folding his arms across his Melvins t-shirt. “So tonight?”

“Yeah.” Eddie closes his locker, hoisting his books up into his arms. He hesitates. “Okay, it’s just… my mom’s gonna be home a little earlier than usual tonight. If you wanna stay, though, I could mention it to her. I’m sure she won’t mind.”

She _will_ mind. She minds a lot of things about Eddie’s life, but he’s pretty certain if he told her he was friends with Richie again, that would actually be above the top of the list. She has insisted that tonight she’ll come home just as soon as Aunt Marie pinned the last roller into her hair, as if she thinks Eddie’s birthday weekend will somehow be condemned to failure if he’s away from her two hours longer than necessary.

And then it turns out it doesn’t matter.

“Actually, I can’t stay long tonight.” Perhaps Richie’s hoping this will suffice, because there’s a pause of at least three seconds before he adds, “There’s a party.”

“Oh right. Cool.”

“Erica Bowie – do you know her? It’s at her house.”

Eddie does know Erica. She used to stick wads of chewed Hubba Bubba in people’s hair in elementary school. Now she goes around telling everyone she was scouted for Calvin Klein and was all set to move to New York last summer, but her dad thought she should get her GED first.

“Oh yeah, I think I know her…” Eddie says vaguely, looking at his shoes, instead of at Richie’s face.

“Maybe you could come too?”

In a move that will haunt him with embarrassment for the rest of the afternoon, Eddie opens his mouth wide and laughs, slightly hysterically, right in Richie’s face before he can stop himself.

“Yeah, okay, I’ll bring dessert. Maybe a potted plant. Jesus, Richie.”

“What? What does that mean?”

“It means…” Eddie shakes his head, even as part of him acknowledges that he _would_ kind of like to go to a party with Richie, if circumstances were different, and he wasn’t dubbed the school’s first and only leper. “Don’t say stupid shit? Nobody wants me at their party.”

Richie looks like he’s about to argue. As if on cue, two boys in black and white letter jackets walk by, pretending to ring bells.

“Fuck are you doing, Tozier? Plague’s airborne, you know.”

“Suck your dad, Morgan,” Richie says to their retreating backs, with little feeling. He turns back to Eddie, eyes dark and earnest. When the boys have gone, he reaches and touches Eddie, feather-light, on the back of his hand. “Listen, we can still do your homework. Meet me this afternoon? Usual place?”

Eddie does, of course. He can’t, with good reason, be mad that Richie is going to a party. That Richie has a lot of friends. That Richie used to get called four-eyes and metal-mouth, but then his larynx got thicker and he grew a couple of feet and now he gets invited to parties by the likes of Erica Bowie. He can’t be mad that life has suddenly come easy to Richie, his ineffable charm helping him overcome all the odds at last.

Besides, when Eddie’s bedroom door is closed and they’re splayed out on the carpet side by side, Eddie can forget about all of it. It’s just the two of them, separate from everyone else, without some ridiculous hierarchy lording over them.

When they were kids, it was always Bill-and-Richie, and Stan and Eddie as the consolation duo. Not that Eddie was unhappy with the arrangement – any group is ideal when it divides into neat, even units – but he always used to wonder what it might be like if Richie sat next to _him_ on the seat of a rollercoaster, stood legs apart on the back of _his_ bike, automatically grabbed _him_ as his partner on school trips.

And now that he has it, Eddie doesn’t intend to mar any time they spend together with thoughts of other people. Because they don’t matter, in the grand scheme of things.

“Okay, first off, I’m sorry about the wrapping paper,” Richie says, once they’re safe in the confines of Eddie’s bedroom later that day. “I thought we had birthday paper, and by the time I realised we didn’t everywhere was closed.”

He hands Eddie a small, rectangular package. Tiny fat Santas smile at him from the paper, telling him to _have a jolly holiday_. He’s crossed out where it says ‘holiday’ and written ‘birthday’ in black Sharpie. Eddie grins.

“Dork,” he says, before tearing off the paper.

It’s a cassette tape. On the front of the case, in the same black marker, Richie’s written _Eddie’s Mix – Vol. 1_. On the back, in smaller handwriting, he’s filled in each line with the names of the songs. Eddie flips it over and back again in his hand several times, forgetting for a moment that he hasn’t said anything. He notices Richie shift uncomfortably from one foot to the other.

“You can tell me if you think it’s dumb,” he says finally.

Eddie looks up. Richie’s smile is a little nervous. Something in Eddie’s stomach tugs at the sight.

“I don’t think it’s dumb. I think it’s really cool,” he says honestly. “It must’ve taken you ages to put together.” Then he deflates as he remembers: “I’ll have to wait and listen to it at your place, though. We don’t have anything to play it on. We had this old Sanyo thing, but my mom sold it at a yard sale when her visualisation tapes weren’t making her rich.”

“Hm, yeah, I thought that might be a problem.” Richie digs into his backpack and brings out something else. This, too, has had its festive wrapping paper vandalised. “This might help?”

Eddie opens the package, his heart thrumming. He already knows what it is but somehow he’s still shocked when the paper reveals a chunky yellow Walkman with a big green Play button.

“Richie?”

“There! Problem solved.”

“But it’s…”

Richie’s face quickly falls. “What?”

Eddie looks at him, the Walkman still lying in half its paper. “This is _way_ too expensive to give to me. It’s too much, Richie, honestly.”

“Jeez, don’t cry about it,” says Richie, rolling his eyes. “It’s an old model, and I got it at Goodwill. I couldn’t give you the most amazing compilation tape in the world and leave you without anything to play it on, could I? Now we can continue your higher musical education without a hitch.”

Eddie can only stare at him. There’s a gleam in Richie’s eye, like he knows he’s done well. Eddie picks up the cassette tape.

“Volume one?”

Richie nods. “Oh yeah. This is just the gateway drug. If you want to have impeccable taste like me, this’ll need to be an ongoing project.”

“Oh, I could only _hope_ to reach your great heights, Richie.”

“Well, dreams can come true.”

“Let’s listen to it now.”

“No, dude, no. That’s not how a mixtape works. You have to listen to it _alone_. You have to let it filter into your blood. You have to lie in a darkened room and only venture out once you know every lyric and note by heart.” Richie grins, to show he isn’t being serious. At least, not completely. “Oh, and you have to do your math homework. You won’t get to model for Calvin Klein if you don’t do your math homework.”

And it’s this – this invitation to a shared joke, this mischievous, private acknowledgement that Erica Bowie is an asshole – that makes Eddie glow, even as he rolls his eyes.

So they lie on the carpet, in front of the bed, and work on Eddie’s math. Richie’s forgery a couple of weeks ago didn’t fool Miss Bianchi. The sudden jump in ability was too suspicious, even for someone as dense as her, so now they’re back to doing boring, honest work.

But Eddie can’t concentrate. He feels restless and unravelled. Richie’s arm is pressed against his on the carpet, and Eddie can’t remember if they’ve ever done that before. They must have done, mustn’t they? Not everything that isn’t recognised is new. It can just be something you haven’t noticed before.

Like how Eddie hasn’t noticed the white, raised scar in the dip of Richie’s thumb joint.

Or the way he nudges his glasses up with his knuckles instead of his fingertips.

It’s only when Richie looks sideways at him that Eddie realises he’s staring.

“You’ve had your pencil poised over question six for, like, two whole minutes, you know,” Richie says. It’s not how he normally speaks, because even though they’re alone, he’s whispering.

“Um,” Eddie swallows. “Just thinking about it, I guess.”

“About what?”

It would be so easy for Eddie to just say it – _question six, I’m thinking about the answer to question six_ – but he doesn’t. Instead, he stays completely still.

He can’t read everything he sees in Richie’s eyes, because he doesn’t recognise the expression in those either. And yet he knows what’s going to happen before it does. Richie leans into the small amount of space between them, angles his head just slightly, and brushes his lips to Eddie’s. Eddie realises a second into it that he’s got his eyes open, so he closes them. Then it’s over.

Eddie doesn’t have the words to respond to the look Richie is giving him. He scrambles for his math book and pulls it close, too close to comfortably write, and stares hard at the page until the numbers swim. _Question six, question six_.

“Eds?”

 _Math book, math book, just look at the math book_.

“Eddie?”

“Yep?” he tries to say, aiming for casual, but it just comes out as a breath.

“Do you wanna talk?”

Eddie flicks his eyes to him and shakes his head. Silence buzzes thickly between them. Then he moves forward, magnetised, and he’s kissing Richie, and Richie isn’t stopping him.

Eddie’s never kissed anyone before but his body seems to understand how to do it. Their mouths seem to conveniently fit together. His hands seem to find Richie’s shoulder and face of their own accord. He can’t gauge how long it is that they spend breaking apart and then rolling together, but when finally they manage to keep from colliding for more than two seconds, Richie’s lips are red and wet, and there’s a smile dancing in his dark eyes, and it’s kind of mesmerising, and absolutely terrific.

Eddie waits for his heart to slow before speaking.

“Don’t you have to go soon?” He doesn’t want to say it, but it would be worse to let Richie say it first.

Richie licks his lips, like he can taste how crimson they are. “I could be fashionably late to the party,” he suggests, which makes them both laugh.

But when the thought of moving, of separating and getting up, occurs to Eddie, a small ball of panic begins to rise in his chest. As if a spell’s been cast to canopy its feathery web above them, and if they stand up they’ll slice right through it. The sky is starting to purple like a bruise outside Eddie’s bedroom though, and there’s not much he can do to postpone the conclusion of whatever the hell they’ve just done. He watches as Richie gets slowly to his feet, before holding his hands out to pull Eddie up too.

“I think I’d better go before your mom comes home and backflip-kicks me through the window,” says Richie, once he’s picked up his backpack. His smile is uncharacteristically shy. “Should we say… to be continued?”

They’re past all boundaries now. Eddie doesn’t even care that he looks desperate when he nods. It’s partly out of relief that they’ve managed to physically move apart with the spell still intact. Maybe there isn’t any spell at all. Maybe it’s all just happening because they’re making it happen.

“Tomorrow, then?” says Richie, hoisting the straps of his backpack on to his shoulders.

“Tomorrow,” says Eddie, encasing the word with a goofy grin, like it’s the most excellent sound in the world.

*

**January 2012**

Aunt Marie does not like Eddie. She’s had an aversion to him since he was a baby, on the premise that all children are exhausting creatures with dirty hands and faces. But she has truly and thoroughly disliked him since Easter of 1997, when he told Uncle Miles – her husband – that if he was going to attempt to emulate Mussolini, he could at least have the good grace to adopt the dictator’s snappy dress sense.

It was, incidentally, also the day Eddie came out to his family. The sum total of his apology to his uncle that day was, “Sorry. I guess you’re not as big a fascist as Mussolini. I mean, he was pretty fascist. Um, your clothes are fine.”

But even Aunt Marie knows that when her nephew spends the entire period between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day trudging back and forth between the kitchen and the bedroom to check if his remaining parent is dead yet, it’s good form to invite him for dinner at least once before he returns to New York. And Eddie knows that, unfortunately, it’s good form to accept the invitation.

So he’s here, a little hungover in yesterday’s jeans. They had the wake here, and he was a little hungover for that too. Aunt Liz has come round for dinner with Uncle Alec. Sweet guy. Eye-wateringly dull. Their son, Hunter, has already flown back to Ottawa, where he’s a plastic surgeon.

His aunt’s house is all Formica and dark wood and Billy Joel memorabilia. It smells persistently of furniture polish and mildew. Eddie’s mother used to drop him off here sometimes in the holidays when he was a kid, the rare few times she had a job. Aunt Marie would light upon child labour as entertainment, up-ending Uncle Miles’ gargantuan penny jar on the kitchen table and making him count the coins. She had him wear rubber gloves though, because money is filthy.

To this day, the mantra that there are more germs on a dollar bill than a toilet seat still flashes in Eddie’s head each time he gingerly slips a note from his wallet.

“How’s Sonia’s house coming along? Is it a real hard slog?” Aunt Marie asks, at the head of the dinner table.

Eddie always finds it weird that she calls his mother by her name in front of him. It’s as if she wants to erase the fact that they’re related.

He’d like to tell her that the house would be coming along quicker if any of them offered to help.

“I’m sure Eddie doesn’t want to talk about all that,” Aunt Liz butts in hurriedly, before he can.

Eddie doesn’t mind Liz. She’s always been the most reasonable of the three sisters.

Aunt Marie looks from her to Eddie and back again, as if she can’t fathom what the hell else they have in common that they could talk about.

“Okay,” she says slowly, gazing down at her plate. Then: “Cathy sure looked fat at the funeral.”

“Dollar store Cathy?” asks Aunt Liz.

“No, Bingo Cathy. Real hefty since Tom left.”

“Oh, but those are thighs she’s had to negotiate with her whole life, Mar.”

“Are you putting the house on the market?” Uncle Miles interrupts, voice gruff around a chicken leg deep fried in peanut oil.

“Miles, dear, Lizzie says Eddie doesn’t want to talk about all that.”

“I was thinking I might live in it actually,” says Eddie, just to see their reactions. “What do you think?” He stabs a piece of chicken with his fork. He cannot eat with his hands. He smiles. “We’d be neighbours again, Aunt Marie.”

She swallows her mouthful slowly, visibly disturbed. “That would be nice.”

“The place could do with a little _zhuzh_ ing up first, though.”

He enjoys the way the word _zhuzh_ makes her wince. What he wants to add is that he’s going to wait until his mother is at least cold in the ground before making any firm decisions on real estate – but he doesn’t. They’re feeding him, after all.

He helps wash up after dinner, and because he (politely, he thinks) refuses dessert, Aunt Marie cuts a huge, uneven hunk out of the blueberry pie on the counter top and slaps it onto a piece of tinfoil.

“There, that’ll feed you for a week,” she says, wrapping it up. It’s the sort of remark that doesn’t sound like it’s supposed to be unkind, but is.

“Thanks for having me round,” Eddie says. He tries to leave the kitchen, but she stops him with a hand on his forearm. His mother’s gold wedding ring gleams on her fat finger.

“Don’t be cruel with Sonia’s house, Eddie. It was her home for thirty-seven years.”

He looks at her hand, then at her face. “Is this about the Howdy Doody cookie jar?”

Her expression hardens, and becomes terribly ugly.

“You always were a little brat,” she hisses, voice low, so as not to offend the gentle sensibilities of Aunt Liz in the other room. “You think you weren’t because you were sick, but let me tell you, the air was a lot lighter around here when you finally packed yourself off to that putrid city to _find yourself_.”

He rolls his eyes, trying not to absorb the unexpected diatribe. “Bye, Aunt Marie.”

“Your mother lost years of her life worrying about you. She worked damn hard to love you. I dare say it sent her to an early grave.”

If Aunt Marie thinks this is going too far, her expression doesn’t give it away. Eddie doesn’t let his own give it away either, but somewhere, deep between his ribs, the words form a harsh and sudden ache.

His goodbye to the others is hasty, and on his way out the front door he can faintly hear Aunt Marie telling them, through what’s probably supposed to be a chuckle, “I guess he was in a rush. Either that or our company isn’t quite _metropolitan_ enough.”

Outside, dregs of grey snow have sluiced the porch, and Eddie almost slips in his keenness to leave. His aunt’s words seem to sneak out the front door and follow him before he can shut them behind.

 _She worked damn hard to love you_.

He knows what the words mean individually, but he can’t make sense of the notion in his head. He’s aware his relationship with his mother was never typical – that she, herself, was not exactly normal, whatever a ‘normal’ mother might be – but he never considered that her love for him was in some way conditional.

Besides, he’d been a good child, hadn’t he? He’d tried to be. Obedient to the point that she could only criticise him for the things he couldn’t control, such as looking like his father. When did things start to change? With the accident, in gym class, maybe. All that _blood_ …

Or when he started home-schooling? When Tanya from the Seacoast Club taught him at the breakfast table, and Eddie’s mother adopted an almost permanently piqued expression as she cleaned around him every day?

Maybe it was when he went back to Derry High. Maybe it was when he made friends with Richie again. Maybe he did become a little disobedient then, grew tired of the restraints of home and emboldened by someone else’s interest in him, but Eddie never thought he’d stopped being good to her. He never thought for a second that she might have to struggle to love him.

Eddie pauses under a street lamp just beginning to burn into life, and whips his phone from his pocket. He’s sending the text before giving himself a chance to even consider if it’s a good idea or not.

**_Hey. Not saying I’m 100% about last night yet but I just sat through dinner in the Seventh Circle of Hell and I don’t wanna start the comfort drinking on my own. So. Come over?_ **

Richie replies almost immediately, as if he already had his phone unlocked in front of him.

**_I’ve been asked out in more romantic ways but sure. Can be there in twenty?_ **

He makes it in fifteen, and Eddie is sitting on the porch bench when he arrives.

“Never had you down as a fan of hypothermia,” says Richie, as he hops up the short steps towards him, hands in his pockets.

“I’m a little homesick so I was trying to emulate the icy feeling of being back in my apartment.”

It’s easier to joke than for Eddie to admit he doesn’t feel like going in the house just yet, doesn’t feel like seeing his mother’s things.

Richie laughs and sits down next to him. “How were the Sanderson sisters? I’m assuming they were your hosts this evening.”

“Oh yeah, just that – witches. But, you know. Hokey, harmless ones.” Eddie pauses. “Maybe that’s not fair. Aunt Liz was okay.”

“She always _was_ the Kathy Najimy of the group. Listen, if we’re gonna sit out here in the arctic tundra can you at least budge up a little?”

Eddie realises he hasn’t even been paying attention to the way he’s sitting almost squarely in the middle of the bench, knees apart.

“Oh. Sorry.” He moves.

“Are you already drunk?”

“No.”

He’s sort of hungry though, having only been able to pick at his dinner. Eddie takes the chunk of foil-wrapped pie from his pocket, unwraps it and, in a move that seems somehow gratifyingly vindictive towards his aunt, takes a huge bite out of it right then and there.

Richie stares at him. “You’re gonna tell me you’re not drunk, before producing a slice of pie from your coat pocket and proceeding to eat it like a Fourth of July hotdog?”

“You want the crust?”

“No, thanks.”

“Oh okay. Famous people don’t eat pie crust, is that it?”

“That’s right. My body is a temple and I absolutely did not inhale fourteen pizza rolls for dinner twenty minutes ago.”

“Your mom still makes you pizza rolls?”

“Alright, bitch, your aunt still makes you blueberry pie.”

“Point.” Eddie finishes the pie himself, dusting the crumbs off his jeans. He screws the tinfoil up into a little ball and tries to bounce it on the porch decking, but it drops between his feet with a light thud. “How is your mom anyway?”

“She’s good.”

“And your dad?”

“Same as ever.”

Eddie’s surprised that the Toziers still live in Derry at all. He’d have thought Richie would’ve bought them a beach house out in the Bahamas or something. That’s what celebrities do, isn’t it? He must have the money. Or maybe he doesn’t – Eddie remembers a TMZ special he once saw about celebrities who are simultaneously famous and drowning in harrowing debt.

No, Richie has money. Eddie looks at him; his slick leather-and-wool bomber, the Fendi logo on the side of his glasses.

There was an article in _Out_ magazine some time last year, heralding Richie a hero for embracing his poor sight with zany eyewear instead of surgery. Eddie’s boyfriend at the time had leaned against the back of the sofa to read it over his shoulder, scoffing, “Saving lives with spectacles? Now I’ve really heard it all. Didn’t you say you knew that guy in school? Was he an unfunny asshole back then too?”

Back then. Sometimes, _back then_ , they’d lie on the bed in Richie’s room, and Richie would make him laugh until there were actual tears in Eddie’s eyes. Until his ribs heaved with it.

“How about we grab a drink,” Richie says, interrupting Eddie’s thoughts, “and then you can tell me all about what’s bothering you?”

“You think there’s something bothering me?”

“Well, clearly.”

Eddie picks up the tinfoil ball at his feet. “It was just some pie, Richie.”

Richie smiles and shakes his head, reaches in his pocket for a cigarette packet, pops out two and offers one over.

“Make you feel better?”

Eddie takes it from him between two fingers, like a piece of candy. His belief that smoking is disgusting and lethal is forever at odds with his liking for the intimacy of being offered a cigarette. A guy he dated when he first moved to New York used to smoke, and his tongue always tasted like a wet ashtray. He lets Richie light the cigarette for him anyway. If nothing else, it warms the tips of his fingers slightly. But when he takes a drag it’s acrid and aromatic, and all he can think about is black tar filling his lungs, so he just lets it rest in the air and burn, trickling orange down to the filter.

“So about last night,” Richie begins carefully. “Are we gonna talk about it?”

“Do you _wanna_ talk about it?” says Eddie.

“Well, I’d like to know you don’t hate me.”

“Richie, have you ever been hated in your whole life?” Eddie taps the ash from the cigarette and it falls to the deck, immediately disappearing into the grey slush at his feet. “No, I don’t hate you.”

“Okay. Good. Because, you know, I wasn’t trying to be… I mean, I wouldn’t want you to think that I…” Richie furrows his brow, for once at a loss for words. He drags on his cigarette like it might help. Apparently, it does. “What I’m trying to say is… I didn’t just make a pass at you because I’d been drinking. But _because_ I’d been drinking, I didn’t think about how shitty it would look to come on to someone when they’re grieving. Does that make sense?”

“Sure.”

“Okay.” Richie peeks up at him from beneath a lock of shiny hair. He hasn’t put any product in it today, and it flops sort of boyishly into his eyes. “Are you just saying that?”

Eddie looks at him. “Are you?”

“No! I really mean it. It’s just, we were having such a good time and – I don’t know, I guess I forgot that we haven’t seen each other in twenty years.”

“You ‘forgot’?”

“You know what I mean.”

Weirdly, Eddie does. Kissing Richie last night had felt so familiar, their high school days could have been as recent as last week.

“We _did_ have a good time. I had a good time with you. I needed the distraction.” Eddie pauses, deciding whether to say it, readying himself with a deep breath. “I guess it’s just the, um… I don’t know what to call it. The avoidance? About what happened at school?”

He doesn’t look up to see Richie’s expression at first. His chest tightens in anticipation of Richie’s response.

“What do you mean? We’ve been talking about pretty much nothing else.”

“Yeah, I don’t mean chicken pox and cafeteria food fights, Richie. I’m talking about what happened at the end of junior year.”

A range of emotions seem to pass over Richie’s face in a matter of seconds. Confusion, then recollection, then maybe – _maybe_ – something like guilt. Finally, he sighs, stubbing out his cigarette butt with the toe of his boot and flicking it through a gap in the decking.

“Alright,” he nods, rubbing his cold hands together. “Let’s talk about it.”

“That’s the problem. I don’t know if I want to. I just know I’m not comfortable pretending it didn’t happen.”

“I’m not pretending, Eddie, I just…”

“Forgot?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” Richie shakes his head, like he’s trying to strike that last part out. “No, I didn’t forget. I tried not to dwell on it.” He seems to sense that this isn’t the right thing to say, and adds, “I know it was worse for you.”

“Worse?” Eddie echoes. “Implying it was in any way bad for you?”

“It was! Hurting you – Christ, I never wanted to do that. Sometimes things just spin out of control, and there’s no way of stopping them.”

He blinks big, dark eyes at Eddie which, despite him frankly having little to gain from a friendship with Eddie, do seem sincere.

“I’m sorry, Eddie, I am. Seventeen-year-old me was a – a confused, insecure little asshole.”

Eddie is too cold, his mind too scattered, to decide if this is a decent apology or not. He accepts it in part because it’s the only thing he’s ever really wanted Richie to say, and in larger part because he wants to invite Richie inside the house. He wants to feel the warm fuzz of alcohol and attraction stirring in his lower belly in a way he hasn’t in months and months. He wants to kiss Richie again. Not because his words have greatly moved him, but because Richie is warm and solid and apparently sweet despite everything, and because it feels good to have his shoulder and thigh pressed up against another person’s like this, and because Eddie is tired of being so abidingly lonely.

When they eventually go inside, they sit in the living room. Most of his mother’s things in here have been packed away, scrubbed and depersonalised, so that it doesn’t feel wrong to have Richie sit on the sofa.

There’s no alcohol in the house besides an unopened bottle of supermarket brand whiskey. Eddie’s mom and aunts used to drink it in tiny measures with ginger beer after dinner sometimes. There’s nothing to mix it with now, or even any ice, so Eddie pours it into two glasses neat.

“Jesus, man, that is _bad_ ,” Richie coughs out, before tilting the glass to his lips for a second, longer sip.

They drink and talk for a while. Not about the distant past, but about Richie’s parents and Eddie’s desire to buy a car and how the weatherman has reported typical Northeaster storms in Maine until the end of February.

It’s so mundane it really ought to snuff out any spark that Eddie felt flicker up when they were out on the porch, but it doesn’t. It’s the way Richie _smells_ , he thinks. Of faint cologne and smokiness and then, beneath all that, just of a man. Just that, and that’s what’s so good, it’s what makes Eddie’s back prickle. It makes him want to put his face in Richie’s neck and inhale deeply.

“You know, Eds,” Richie says, a little woozily, not because he’s drunk – they couldn’t go through with any more of the whiskey, it wasn’t worth it – but because it’s warm, and snowing a little outside while they’re tucked up on the couch like a pair of lazy cats. “I’m really glad we ran into each other like this. Feels kind of serendipitous, don’t you think?”

It’s the nickname that does it. That goddamned, stupid nickname that Eddie always complained sounded like chewy candy.

“That’s a big word to be using right now,” Eddie mutters.

He picks Richie’s left hand up between both of his own and presses his thumbs gently into the back of it, like he’s reading a palm the wrong way up. He has to kiss Richie, because he knows Richie won’t kiss him first, not after last night, and he thinks Richie wants him to. He thinks this because Richie shyly solicits it in the way he puts his hand on Eddie’s shoulder and strokes his neck a couple of times with his thumb, but does nothing else.

Eddie leans in to Richie’s breath and moves his hand to curl it into Richie’s hair. “Let’s do this now,” he whispers, and presses their mouths together.

They stay locked together, only moving to angle their heads this way and that, and when they get up to go to the bedroom Eddie feels the brief moment of physical separation deeply. He wants to put his hands on Richie; he wants to put his hands all over his skin. His palms thrum with it.

When was the last time he had sex? June. Recently single – _very_ recently. Commiseration drinks with his line manager leading to an unhappy twenty minute fumble on the mattress in Eddie’s new apartment. The man’s face, red and dripping, heaving out bits of grubby talk as he rubbed into him fruitlessly. IKEA would deliver a bedframe the following weekend, but it didn’t make the whole episode feel any less unsavoury.

Sex with Richie is a whole different world.

“Hey, I can see them now,” he whispers, when he’s on top of Eddie in the single bed, everything far too small and kind of hilarious, Eddie’s legs crossed over his back, ankle resting in the dip of Richie’s back.

“See what?” says Eddie.

“Your freckles.” Richie dips his head to kiss him lightly on the nose, his forearms framing Eddie’s face. “Guess they were there all along.”

Eddie tightens his arms around his neck and pulls him down, finally pushes his nose into the tongue-tempting crevice of Richie’s neck, breathing deeply, opening his mouth to graze his teeth against the warm skin there.

“Don’t hide,” Richie murmurs. Eddie can feel the words vibrating in his throat. He pulls back slightly to look at him. Richie’s taken his glasses off – says keeping them on is like fucking with socks on – and his eyes are so dark, pupils blown wide, lips kiss-bruised and bitten.

“Go faster?” Eddie whispers, digging his heel in just slightly, groaning softly when Richie gives him an affirmative kiss and complies. He feels Richie’s hand moving down to curl around him and Eddie’s whole body shudders with it. He manages to push his hand feebly. “Don’t make me come,” he says through a breathless laugh. “If you do, that’ll be it. I’ll be done.”

“Eddie, I’m so close to done you’ve no idea.”

He collapses around Eddie’s neck when they’re finished, panting against him. He’s whispering something. When Eddie tilts his head to release his ear from the pillow, he realises it’s a quiet chant of, “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Eddie lifts his heavy arm to run a hand through his hair. It’s damp with sweat. A shower would be good but he doesn’t want to move.

The world is still spinning a little as he comes down from the last of the high, but Richie’s broad hand is on his chest, anchoring him, and Eddie could sleep so easily with it weighing on him like this, with a warm person’s slowly steadying breath on his neck.

“Are we supposed to sleep here?” Richie says, spoiling the moment as he sits up a little in the bed. “Because – how the fuck?”

“Couch is free.” Eddie pulls the duvet, previously abandoned on the floor, up and over him.

“Fucker,” Richie says, with no bite. He leans to kiss Eddie lightly on the forehead, before rolling over him and out of the bed, finding his underwear amongst the clothes on the floor. “Be right back.”

Eddie starts to doze while he’s gone, sated and sleepy, half of his mind glowing weakly with a little mantra – _what in the fuck did I just do_ – while the other half grabs achingly for sleep.

When Richie returns, the bed somehow doesn’t seem too small to accommodate them. Eddie presses up against the wall, cocooned in half the duvet with Richie’s arm around him. With his free hand, Richie leans over the nightstand to switch off the lamp before settling back into their makeshift nest. In the dark, against Eddie’s back, his long fingers trace aimless, soothing shapes. And that’s faintly familiar too.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for underage drinking

**October 1992**

And Eddie’s whole world changes, just like that. All weekend, he floats within this luminous bubble of happiness, intoxicated by his own wonderful, private secret. He listens to the mixtape five times. Once on Friday, twice each on Saturday and Sunday. And then… and then..?

Nothing.

All week, he goes to school each morning, and every day Richie gives him little more than a smile across the cafeteria, a brush of the shoulder in the corridors. It’s temporary, Eddie tells himself, nothing out of the ordinary. But by the time Friday afternoon rolls back around Eddie’s practically vibrating with nerves as he waits in the sports equipment shed on the far field.

When Richie finally shows up they don’t talk about it – any of it – and Eddie’s at a complete loss. What happened to ‘to be continued’? What happened to _that_?

“The guy’s a complete space-case,” Richie says about his Physics teacher, Mr Ellison, as they walk to Eddie’s house that same afternoon.

Fall leaves crunch beneath their feet now the weather has turned, and Eddie finds it easier to look at those rather than at Richie.

“For starters, he’s obsessed with bushbabies. He writes our quizzes himself just so he can use them in every possible scenario. Like, ‘if a Senegal bushbaby weighs _x_ amount of pounds’ or ‘if a Somali bushbaby is sliding down the road of _x_ inclination’. It’s really weird. So anyways, today he tried to tell us that wool is a plant, and then he said my conduct was ‘disgraceful’ because I laughed. Like I’m _not_ supposed to laugh at that?”

It’s not dissimilar to the usual stories Richie tells him about his classes any time they walk to Eddie’s house together, but this time Eddie can barely focus. Richie seems to sense this because he changes the subject.

“So hey, did you know someone’s throwing a Halloween party at the old ironworks in a couple weeks?” he says.

“Near the Barrens? Isn’t that place condemned?”

“Well, they don’t smelt iron there anymore if that’s what you mean.”

“What I mean is, I don’t think you can get in. It’s all locked up.”

“Nah, Ev McDonnough’s uncle squatted there for, like, a year or something. Why don’t we go?”

Eddie looks at him, but Richie doesn’t seem to be joking.

“You serious?”

Richie shrugs. He's looking straight ahead at the street, which is quiet at this time in the afternoon. When he speaks, his voice isn't _quite_ casual enough, but the fact he's trying is mind-blowing all on its own. “Why not?”

“Who’s throwing the party?”

“Bunch of seniors, I think. It happened last year too. I'm surprised you didn't hear about it. This couple hooked up on the mezzanine floor but it collapsed and the guy broke his dick in, like, two places.”

“You can’t _break_ your dick, Richie.”

“Uh, you _can_? It’s called penile fracture.”

“Did Mr Ellison tell you that?”

“He’s a _Physics_ teacher, Eds, he doesn’t know anything about dicks. He's probably never even seen his own. So the ironworks – do you wanna come with me or not?”

Eddie can’t make sense of the offer. Part of him is thrilled. The more logical side of his brain is wondering why Richie is apparently having difficulty acknowledging that they kissed – like, sort of a _lot_ – last Friday afternoon, but is somehow totally cool with inviting him to a party. Together. _Eddie_. A _party_.

“I don’t think anyone will want me there,” Eddie says finally, shaking his head. “You know the shit people say.”

“Well, fuck them, it’s not like it’s somebody’s house. It’s practically a public event. Besides, nobody’ll say shit to you.” Richie suddenly grabs Eddie’s wrist and looks at him intently. “I won’t let them.”

Eddie’s stomach flips at the physical contact that’s been so horribly lacking this whole long week - but just as soon as Richie’s hand is on him it’s gone again, clutching the strap of his backpack instead.

When they get to the house Eddie tries hard to find an appropriate moment to bring last week up, but the words won’t come. Richie seems to relax a little, at least. He touches Eddie on the back of his hand when he’s helping him with his homework, and presses his shoulder to Eddie’s casually when they break to get soda and watch _Blossom_. And, as always, he’s never stingy with those big, toothy smiles.

But there’s something jarring about the pretence of normality, and Eddie can’t fully relax until Richie has gone home, and Eddie can sit on his bed cross-legged with the Walkman in his lap and listen to the songs Richie has carefully curated for him.

He tries to glean some kind of hidden message from the selection but it’s almost impossible. ‘Blister in the Sun?’ ‘Kool Thing’? They’re not romantic songs. They’re noisy, speedy, scratchy songs with weird lyrics. They’re songs someone listens to when they’re going to a party.

But then, Eddie supposes, he is.

*

He gets an A on his Olmecs essay, despite handing it in late.

“Really nice work, Eddie,” his History teacher, Miss Locklear, tells him when she places it on his desk. “You always go beyond the basics. I like that.”

There isn’t really a decent way to make a disease joke about Mesoamerican history homework, so someone behind Eddie just shoves their boot into the back of his chair instead.

Eddie dawdles at the end of the lesson so he can speak to Miss Locklear in private.

“What’s up, Eddie?” she says, not looking up from where she’s marking the register at her desk, as everybody else files out of the classroom. “Gunning for an A+ instead? You’ll have to brush up on your grammar first, I’m afraid.”

“Oh no, it’s not that. I just wanted to ask you about something real quick.”

“Uh huh?”

He takes a deep breath, feeling a little silly. Miss Locklear wasn’t here when Eddie was a freshman and he doesn’t know her very well, but she doesn’t seem like the type of person to laugh at him.

“When I was reading a book about Mesoamerica for the essay you set, I came across something that I thought was…” He tries to choose his words carefully, so as not to appear insane. “Interesting. Um, about the Long Count calendar? Maybe you already know but, you see, it ends in a weird place. It ends almost exactly twenty years from now. And there was this guy, this archaeologist guy in the ‘60s who said that at the end of the, uh, the cycle –”

“The bʼakʼtun.”

“Right. At the end of, uh, that there’d be Armageddon and… well, the complete annihilation of…” He looks at her, trailing off slightly. “Of human civilization.”

She steadies her gaze at him behind her tiny gold-rimmed spectacles, pen still poised over her register. “And this is a concern for you?”

“I wouldn’t call it a concern,” he lies, trying to sound airy, “but a lot of the essays I read about it were actually from the last couple of years. It seems like people are becoming interested in it again.”

She furrows her brow. “Exactly how many of these essays did you read?”

“Oh, only about two or three.” Another lie. In fact, the reading has extended beyond the essay deadline. It’s become one of the methods Eddie has tried using to keep his mind off Richie, holed up in his bedroom every night of the week. It’s had the unintended side-effect of paranoia-induced insomnia.

Miss Locklear puts her pen down. She has a strange expression on her face. Almost like she’s amused, but without the hint of a smile.

“Well, you know, Eddie, I don’t think the world _can_ end in twenty years. Because it’s actually going to end in five years.”

He tries to swallow the sudden lump in his throat. “It is?”

“Of course. A bishop from Edessa predicted that the Antichrist would return in August 1997, and we’d all be blown to smithereens. That’s assuming, of course, that the Second Coming doesn’t happen _next_ year, like The Family International predict. And, assuming, of course, that we aren’t living in some otherworldly dimension on account of the fact the world actually ended in 1910 when Halley’s Comet snuffed out all life on earth. Or 1658, the year Columbus had his money on. Do you see what I’m saying?”

“I think so.”

Finally, she smiles. It’s a warm, motherly sort of smile. “There is _nothing_ in Mesoamerican prophecy to suggest any sort of disaster is going to happen in two decades. For the ancient Maya, coming to the end of a cycle was actually a huge celebration. It might mean something wonderful is going to happen. It’s like Tarot – have you ever used Tarot cards?”

Aunt Marie brings Tarot cards round to the house all the time. They always seem to predict love and riches for his mother, and little other than bad luck for Eddie.

“Everyone thinks the Death card is this terrible omen, but really it’s just about endings and beginnings – rebirth, change. There’s a beauty in death. I guess because it’s an inherent part of being alive.”

Eddie looks at her, wondering if Miss Locklear is perhaps a little kooky like Aunt Marie.

“You don’t really believe in tarot, do you?” he asks.

“No. I believe in the New England Patriots and good coffee. Now, is there anything else I can help you with?”

He shakes his head.

“You worry a lot, don’t you? I can tell.” She tilts her head to one side, smiling again. “How are you getting on anyway? Finding school okay? Mr Pelletier told me you had a bit of a rough ride of it last year.”

“Everything’s fine.”

She doesn’t seem very convinced, even when he tries to smile at her. She doesn’t push it, though.

“Alright, well. Off you go then. Stop checking out books on cataclysmic prophecies and get yourself a copy of Wren & Martin’s English Grammar. I want to see commas in your next essay, okay? And Eddie?”

He looks at her, his hand on the door handle of the classroom.

“Things aren’t more likely to happen just because they’re bad. There’s no correlation there at all. If you want proof, grab yourself a newspaper from, oh, a fortnight ago. Look for an article on the Rainbow Man.”

Eddie waits until morning break before traipsing off to the library to check the old news. He sees the picture of the rainbow wig and ‘Jesus Saves’ t-shirt before he sees anything else. Then the headline: _Religious sports fan holds off police for 9 hours in hotel_. According to the short article, a born-again Christian told police negotiators he was going to detonate a bomb because the Rapture was due to arrive in six days.

Eddie checks the date of the article against the date today. According to this guy, the world was supposed to end seventeen days ago.

*

He wants to be a different person, he decides. He doesn’t want to follow a foot behind everyone else anymore. For people his age – for people like Richie – it seems like there’s no need to lose sleep over the end times. What’s happening is happening, and when it’s over it’s over, and there’s nothing else to it.

At lunch, Eddie watches across the cafeteria as Richie lets one of the girls at his table comb her lilac fingernails through his hair, twisting and braiding it. He accepts it the way a docile dog accepts a toddler climbing onto its back. He has his chin propped on his hand, engrossed in conversation with the guy sitting opposite him.

“You should scoop it on to the other side like this,” Eddie can hear the girl saying, chewing gum like cud between her back teeth. She doesn’t seem fazed by the fact that Richie isn’t listening to her. “Ohmygod, you look just like River Phoenix. Hannah, look at his hair.”

Richie could not look less like River Phoenix if he tried. What she means is River Phoenix is _dreamy_.

“Give me a break,” Eddie hears Stan mutter under his breath. Apparently, he’s noticed the simpering display too.

Eddie looks at him. He looks back at Richie. The girl must tug on his hair a little too hard, because Richie winces and bats her hand away reflexively, like swatting a fly. He leans away from her in his seat just slightly, but smiles, like he doesn’t want to hurt her feelings.

“Why don’t you like him?” Eddie asks, turning back to Stan.

Stan’s eyes flicker briefly from his homework up to Richie’s table. He doesn’t pretend to misunderstand.

“I think he’s phony as hell,” he says.

“Why? There’s a difference between being phony and just changing as a person. I’m sure you’ve changed a lot. I mean, you don’t button your shirts right up to your chin anymore.”

Stan doesn’t laugh like Eddie hopes he will.

“I wasn’t the one who came back sophomore year and decided I needed new friends because I’d discovered the transformative power of Clearasil.” He puts his pen down for a moment, looking at Eddie. “Look, I know you’re all buddy-buddy with him now and that’s your choice, but I don’t think there’s any harm in reminding you that you don’t have to be a bully to be a sucky person.” He adds in a mutter under his breath, “I mean, you’re not sitting at _his_ table, are you?”

“No, because I’m sitting with you.”

“Because you want to, or because there’s not enough room at the River Phoenix Hair Salon?”

Stan’s expression is moody, but beneath that the hurt is obvious.

Eddie’s stomach drops. He hadn’t realised Stan felt Richie’s departure from their group so keenly as some type of betrayal. After all, isn’t it only girls who get caught up in those kinds of micro-politics? Don’t boys chop and change and drift away from one another, but still bump fists in the changing rooms, still nod at each other in the hallways?

He can’t keep up with high school politics. It’s too complicated.

“There’s a Halloween party in a couple weeks,” Eddie blurts out before he can stop himself, desperate to take that look off Stan’s face. “I think I might go. Why don’t you come?”

Stan is silent for a moment. “Sorry, am I supposed to say yes?”

Eddie’s sympathy starts to morph into annoyance. “You could at least _try_.”

“Why? It’s not like I’m desperate to go to a party and I’ve been waiting my whole sorry life for an invitation. You wanna know how I’ll be spending my Halloween? Marathoning the _Puppet Master_ movies and eating my body weight in candy corn. Ben and Bill are coming. You’re invited, of course, but I think I already know what you’re gonna choose.”

“Why don’t you just come for an hour?”

“No, I’m good.” Stan must sense that he’s being sulky, because he softens a little and says more gently, “Anyway, even if I wanted to, I’m completely snowed with _this_ crap.” He indicates the exercise book in front of him.

“How do you have _so_ much homework? I swear you do, like, eight Stats problem sets every lunch time. Are you taking extra classes or something?”

Stan looks at him like he’s stupid. He peels back the exercise book, revealing the name on the front. Not Stanley Uris, but Danny Alhadeff.

“Oh,” says Eddie, finally understanding. He lowers his voice. “How many are there? They’re not threatening you, are they?”

“No, Eddie. They’re _paying_ me.”

“ _Oh_. So it’s like – a business?” Eddie wishes he’d known about this venture _before_ he’d established himself as a perpetual failure in math class. “That’s very entrepreneurial of you.”

“Yeah, well, Dad doesn’t believe in allowance and it’s nigh on impossible to get a weekend job in this town.”

“What’s your going rate?”

Stan smirks, the closest thing to a smile he’s managed all lunch. “Why, interested?”

“Maybe not. I tried it once and Bianchi saw right through it. She said even if I don’t understand numbers, I must understand the alphabet well enough to know there’s a big difference between my F and someone else's A.”

“She is a _lovely_ woman. Well, if you ever change your mind I’ll do you a generous friend rate, okay?”

Eddie smiles at him. “Thanks.”

He pauses, as something occurs to him. He takes a deep breath, drumming his fingers on the table.

“Actually, Stan, if you definitely don’t wanna go to the party – and I _totally_ don’t blame you, parties suck – could I ask you for a favour? I’d _really_ owe you one…”

*

Even with Stan covering for him, it takes a lot for Eddie’s mother to let him leave the house on Halloween.

“I don’t like the idea of you going to a party. Not on Halloween. I saw a special on _Maury_ about teenagers going wild at Halloween, it made my blood go cold. They ritually sacrificed a farmer’s _scarecrow_ , Eddie,” she says, chopping potatoes for their dinner.

“It’s not a party, or a ritual sacrifice… it’s just hanging out at Stan’s. We’ll probably be doing homework.”

“And Stan’s parents will be there?”

“Of course!”

“And there won’t be any alcohol?”

“No, Mom, they don’t drink. They’re Jewish, remember?”

Eddie has no idea if Jewish people drink or not, but luckily neither does his mother, and this seems to relax her.

He’s seventeen. Practically an adult. It’s humiliating to even have to have this kind of conversation, but there’s no use in saying so. If he does, she’ll just keep him home out of spite. He has to be clever, make her think she’s in control.

“And you’ll be home by nine o’clock tomorrow morning?” she says, pointing at him with half a potato.

“Absolutely.”

“And if they try to make you eat anything _funny_ , just say no.”

By eight p.m., Eddie has dressed himself into the only semblance of cool he can manage. Richie has readily assured him that Halloween costumes are _not_ permitted, and that to wear one would mean certain social suicide, so Eddie’s settled on his least K-mart looking jeans, and a Kingston Trio t-shirt Richie said he liked once.

“It’s supposed to be ironic, right?” he’d said, fingering the material at the hem.

It was _not_ supposed to be ironic, but if Richie says Eddie’s t-shirt is ironic, then Eddie’s t-shirt is now ironic.

He rummages for the plastic bag at the bottom of his closet and pulls out the tan and blue flannel inside. He scraped five dollars together to buy it from Goodwill on the way home from school last week. But when he looks at himself wearing it in the mirror, he looks too much like he's copying Richie.

He takes it off. Then puts it back on. Then takes it off. Then thinks about how cold it will be outside, and puts it back on again. Then it’s nearly eight twenty, and he’s supposed to be meeting Richie at the Barrens in ten minutes, so he keeps the flannel on and rushes out of the house before he can change his mind again.

“Cool shirt,” Richie says, when they meet at half past, flicking two finger guns. So that’s something.

He’s in the same uniform – flannel, jeans, band shirt – but somehow he makes it look infinitely cooler. As they stand face to face Richie reaches his hands out, and for one wonderful moment Eddie thinks he’s going to kiss him. Then his hands go up past Eddie’s shoulders and his neck and delve straight into his hair, messing it up for him.

“There,” says Richie, smiling at him.

Is that how it’s done? A few flicks of the wrist and suddenly he’s a different person? Eddie _feels_ like a different person, but only because Richie is here and he’s slipping a hip flask out of his pocket for their own private pre-party. It’s full of scotch. It's revolting, like burnt wood, but Eddie swigs it back when Richie offers it, and although it hurts his throat it emboldens him a little too.

He can hear the music pumping through the dark as they make their way up the long gravel road leading to the ironworks ruins. Someone’s put down tracks of amber Christmas lights to guide the way, and in the darkness they vaguely illuminate packs of people standing around smoking, laughing, slugging back beer. Richie takes the flask out of his pocket again and between them they quickly finish the contents.

When they go inside (and Richie was right: the huge, previously boarded front door has been torn from its hinges to allow access to the wild youth of Derry) Eddie realises he needn’t have worried about someone recognising him and demanding that he leave, lest he infect everyone with The Plague. It’s so dark, except for the strobing shadows, that he can barely make out a single recognisable face, and the music is so loud he can’t hear one familiar voice.

“Let’s go over there,” Richie says in his ear, breath hot like breeze on a beach. He puts his hands on Eddie’s back to guide him, and for a moment the brief touch of his fingertips calms Eddie down.

It’s only when they find space to stand together that Eddie realises how light-headed he is. He isn’t used to drinking; at least, not so quickly. The scotch is still burning his chest, making him feel like he might throw up, and it’s stuffy in here in a way that makes him want to reach for his inhaler.

But he’s so close to Richie, he can smell his deodorant and the cigarette he smoked on the way here and, beneath that, something musky and boyish that’s entirely him, and that makes Eddie feel a little like he’s floating too.

Richie passes him something sweet and fizzy, and Eddie’s so thirsty in this dry, packed warehouse, like all the bodies squashed up around them have sucked out the very air from the place, that he knocks it back quickly.

Someone, not Richie this time, passes him another.

Everything seems to speed up a little then. They get sucked into this dark horde of bodies; the music becomes trance-like and booming, pounding like a live, beating heart, and Eddie tips his head back to gaze at the black, cacophonous ceiling just to look at something that isn’t another body.

It’s not dancing, what everyone’s doing. It’s just people barrelling into each other, jumping on each other’s toes. Eddie feels himself being shoved this way and that, and when he grabs a third drink, of his own volition this time, Richie hooks an arm around him and pulls him into a corner, rescuing him.

“This is fucking nuts,” he laughs, having to shout to be heard over the music as his fingers grip Eddie’s shoulder tight.

Eddie downs half his drink. It doesn’t taste like it has alcohol in it so it goes down easily.

“I need to talk to you,” he suddenly has the courage to say. It’s like someone’s flipped a switch - he feels like he could say or do whatever he wants.

“What?” Richie shouts back, tilting his head.

“I said –” Eddie tries again, but Richie’s eyes are already looking over his shoulder, lighting up in recognition.

When Eddie turns to see what he’s looking at, he finds that some of Richie’s friends are easing their way through the mass of bodies, smeared in neon face paint, glow sticks dangling around their necks and wrists.

“Come on!” says Richie, apparently forgetting, with several drinks in him, that his friends are not Eddie’s friends.

He grabs Eddie’s hand but only for a split second, only to tug him along after him. Eddie doesn’t budge and Richie doesn’t force him. He just goes, like he’s expecting Eddie to follow.

Eddie stays where he is, backing himself up against the wall so he can survey the room from relative safety. He swallows his drink, hoping it might help in some way. But as soon as he loses sight of Richie in the crowd, he begins to panic.

Where _is_ he? Richie doesn’t look like anybody else at their school but in here everyone seems to morph into one disorienting faceless mass.

“Whoops! I almost didn’t see you there, little man! Oh, Zena, _look_ at him.”

Two very tall, very skinny girls are suddenly right in front of him, one with electric blue makeup all around her eyes, the other with spiky, violet hair. She smells like violets too; like violet candy and sweat.

It’s too dark to be completely certain but Eddie doesn’t think they go to his school. They look quite a bit older. Like college kids.

“Are you lost?” Violet-hair asks, bending down like he’s a kid in a supermarket.

“He’s not a _dog_ , Ash,” Blue-makeup says.

“You look a little young to be drinking,” says Violet-hair, ignoring her friend and grabbing Eddie’s near-empty Red Cup. “But if you’re gonna do it, at least make sure it’s the good shit, yeah? Not this Kool-aid crap.”

They show him the good shit. They have hipflasks of their own, and they pour a large shot into his cup. It’s tequila, which he’s never tried before but which is so disgusting he almost immediately throws up. The girls laugh at his screwed-up expression.

“Sorry, little man, I left the salt and lemons at home. You want another?”

They all do it this time, and on second thoughts maybe the sour splash on his tongue isn’t so bad, and maybe it’s possible that Eddie really can be what the party is asking of him.

They dance; the girls keep petting him like a mascot, tipping his head back for their flasks like Samaritans tilting water to the lips of a beggar, and someone starts letting off purple and green strobe lights that soar about the room like mesmerising, silent fireworks, and it’s getting too hot now; Eddie has to tear off his flannel and scrub at his damp face and hair with it.

He doesn’t know how much time has passed; the music has all been smashed together in one long, endless sequence, so that it’s impossible to measure time by songs. It’s just a heavy beat that goes on and on and on and on. He’s pulled finally from the trance when he feels a bare hand on his bare arm, and someone saying his name.

“Eddie? Eddie! _Eddie_ , it’s me!”

It’s Richie, behind him, hands on his arms, pulling him in. Eddie’s heart alights at the sight of him.

“Where’ve you been?” Eddie demands, delighted, chucking his arms around him. “You fucking left me!”

“I thought you were with me,” Richie shouts back. He stands back a little, making Eddie's hands drop from him. “Are you okay?”

“You should take better care of your friends,” Violet-hair butts in, swooping down like a purple-feathered mother hen.

Richie glances at her, clearly confused, though he doesn’t respond. Maybe he agrees. He grabs Eddie and maneuvers him through the damp crush of jumping bodies, up a flight of metal stairs, sitting him down on the landing at the top.

“Dude, are you completely fucked?” he laughs.

“No, I just need to _talk_ to you,” Eddie insists.

“Oka-a-ay, talk to me then.”

They can hear each other a little better up here, although Eddie’s ears are ringing and his voice sounds hollow, like it's trapped in his head. Maybe he doesn’t want to talk. Maybe he wants to keep dancing, or jumping around, or whatever people are doing down there. He grabs hold of Richie’s wrists, unsure what to do to make this happen.

“Let’s go back down,” he says in the end, shaking Richie’s hands like it’s an urgent matter.

“We can but I think you need to cool off a little first, amigo.” Richie grabs the flannel shirt Eddie has balled up in his lap and fans him with it. It’s bliss.

“Why haven’t you kissed me?” Eddie suddenly blurts out, like vomit, squinting against the breeze from the shirt.

“ _What_?”

Eddie licks his lips, looking at him like it’s a challenge. “You heard.”

He feels a little slow, but he doesn’t miss the way Richie looks about the two of them, like he’s checking for spies. When he’s satisfied that no one has heard, he turns back to Eddie, running a hand through his own wild hair.

“Eddie…”

“I’m just so fucking tired of trying to figure it out. You know?”

“Okay... okay, but let’s not talk about this right now.”

“Why?”

Richie glances over Eddie’s shoulder. Eddie turns around too. There are a few couples dotting the balcony, making out sloppily. One girl has her tongue in an ugly boy's ear.

“ _Why_ , Richie?”

“Come on, you wanted to go back downstairs –”

Eddie shakes his head, hard. “Stop bullshitting me, _please_.”

“I’m not –”

“Then answer the _question,_ Richie. What am I? Am I just an... an _amigo_?"

Somebody barrels up the stairs, laughing like they’ve been inhaling nitrous oxide, alarming Richie and Eddie into springing apart. When whoever it is shoves past, their big boots scraping grit on Eddie’s arm, Richie shifts and clasps his hands between his knees, sighing.

“Come on,” he says again, standing up, and this time Eddie follows.

He ties his shirt around his waist and lets himself be dragged back into the mess of bodies, but the buzz of the booze has started to ebb away already, making his head go heavy, and Richie must realise this because they only last a little longer before they end up outside.

They sit on a felled tree trunk, a few yards from the ruins. Richie slides him a cigarette but Eddie shakes his head. He watches while Richie fumbles with the lighter. It takes him a few tries to flick the wheel. In the black, unclouded air of the night, it’s clear that he’s pretty drunk too.

“I’m sorry for flaking on you,” he says in a small voice. “I guess I just – if anyone found out, you know, it’d be hell… for both of us. So we have to keep it a secret.”

“I'm not stupid, I’m not going to tell anyone,” Eddie says indignantly. Then he lowers his voice to a whisper. “Did you not, like… _want_ to kiss me?” He plays with the sleeves of the shirt around his waist so that he doesn’t have to look at Richie. It’s chilly outside, but he’s burning all over.

Richie looks up to check that there’s no one nearby before answering.

“I did.”

“Only then? Only in that moment?”

Richie shakes his head. “All the time,” he admits.

Eddie feels his chest contract, his stomach lurch – is this what love feels like, then?

No. No, this is something else. This is –

“I think I’m gonna be sick,” he mutters.

“Oh shit – uh, okay, put your head between your legs?”

But even drunk, Eddie knows this is wrong advice. He ignores Richie and stands up, choosing a spot on the dark horizon and breathing deep lungfuls of cold air as he stares at it. After a few moments, the heavy knot in his chest slowly starts to retreat.

As he stands there he sees figures approaching, glowing in the dark. Friends of Richie. Among them Matthew Miller, who's tall and scares him a little, and Hannah Duntor, who's sort of mean, and a few others he only vaguely recognises.

“Hey Eddie,” one of them says. They’ve never been exactly cruel to him like some kids at school, but it’s clear they’re confused by his presence here. “Richie?”

“Oh, hey.” Richie stands, coming over. “We were just, uh…” He lifts the cigarette by way of an explanation.

“Bum a smoke?” Matt says, at the same time another asks, “Coming back inside?”

Richie looks at Eddie. Eddie thinks _he’s going to leave me, he’s going to leave me and go back inside and I’ll have to walk home alone because I’ve lost it now and I don’t want to go back in, I’ve lost that feeling and this whole idea was stupid stupid stupid_.

Richie shakes his head, passing his friend a cigarette. “I’m gonna take Eddie home.”

One girl coos; another laughs. Eddie thinks he hears one of the boys mutter, “You’re too goddamn nice to him, dude,” but he isn’t sure. Maybe he’s hearing things.

Richie’s friends go back to the party, not before one of them whips off their glow stick necklace and casts it over Richie’s head like a game of ring toss. As soon as they’re outside the gates of the ironworks, Richie tosses it in a nearby trash can.

When they're clear of the party, he puts an arm around Eddie to keep him upright.

“Your arms are fucking freezing, Eds. Put your shirt back on.”

“Sure thing, _Mom_ ,” Eddie mutters, trudging along sloppily, pleased when Richie laughs. Pleased when Richie unties the shirt from around him and forces Eddie’s arms into the warm sleeves. And when Richie holds on to his hand just a second longer than necessary, giving it a squeeze as they walk home through the dark, quiet town, Eddie thinks, whatever he said back there – because it’s all a bit of a blur already – it must have been the right thing. He hopes it was.

When they get to Richie’s house, Richie force feeds Eddie dry toast and water, stands next to him at the bathroom sink while they brush their teeth, and finally flops him into his bed.

Eddie’s dimly aware of Richie dragging the chair from under his messy desk over to his bedroom door. He slots the back of it beneath the handle, as if there’s a danger of someone walking in and seeing Eddie in a pair of Power Rangers pyjamas that probably haven’t fit Richie since he was about twelve, but which, rather embarrassingly, fit Eddie perfectly.

“You look fucking priceless, dude,” Richie laughs, crawling over him to get into the other side of the bed.

“Fuck _off_ ,” Eddie mumbles, but Richie doesn’t stop laughing – a low, stifled snort so as not to wake his parents – until they’re lying down face to face. “Ugh, there’s something under me.”

“Huh?”

“Henri is under my shoulder.”

“Oh.”

Richie slides his fingers beneath Eddie’s back, pulling out the offending grey bunny and sending him careening over the edge of the mattress.

“You okay?” Richie asks. He’s taken his glasses off; his eyes are red and tired.

“Everything’s spinning.”

“Close your eyes then.”

Eddie does, but then he feels gentle fingers brushing the hair from his forehead and he smiles.

“Did you mean it?” Eddie asks, voice a little muffled by the pillow.

“Mean what?”

“You know what.”

Eyes still closed, he hears Richie shift in bed. Feels warm breath on his face. Minty from toothpaste.

“Do you promise not to throw up on me?” Richie murmurs.

Eddie shakes his head no, but Richie draws closer anyway and brushes their lips together. It’s a very, very gentle kiss, only slightly impeded by the pillow.

In fact, it’s so feather-light that Eddie, without opening his eyes, has to ask, “Did you just kiss me?”

He feels the weight of Richie’s laugh against his side.

“Yeah,” Eddie hears him say. “Fucking wild.”

*

They wake up face to face. They mustn’t have moved all night. Eddie emerges from the covers, slow and in pain. Sweating in fleece pyjamas.

“Morning, sunshine,” Richie croaks, face still half hidden by the duvet.

Sitting up makes Eddie’s insides slosh, so he groans and lies back down. His back aches. _Everything_ aches.

“It's weird how you're kind of sweet when you’re dying,” Richie says, which Eddie thinks might be a compliment.

Richie is less damaged – or perhaps simply more accustomed to hangovers – and manages to ease himself out of bed with little complaint. He goes downstairs and comes back minutes later with orange juice and more toast.

“If you want it,” he says. “Leave it on the night stand if you don’t.”

Eddie manages all of the juice and only a few bites of toast. He feels like he hasn’t eaten in days, but the food makes his stomach turn over at the same time.

“I need to get home before nine,” he rasps, sliding back under the duvet which smells musty with scotch-tinged sweat.

“That’s long gone, champ. It’s already past ten.”

“ _Shit_. I told my mom I’d be home already.”

Richie considers this. “You're in luck. I can do great voices. Want me to call her? Pretend to be my dad?”

“Could you pretend to be _Stan’s_ dad?”

“Impersonating a rabbi? Isn’t that a punishable offence?”

“The only person who’s gonna be getting punished is _me_. Fuck.”

Eddie can feel the panic rising as he sits up to look for his clothes – but then Richie’s fingers are on his back, tracing lazy patterns, and Eddie feels his sore muscles relax a little.

“Chill out,” Richie says, voice a little husky with sleep in a way that makes Eddie’s lower back tingle. “You can use the phone downstairs to call her. Don’t worry, my parents won’t be up yet. Tell her, uh… you’ve woken up feeling a little sick.”

Despite Eddie’s dread, when Richie sniggers Eddie can’t help but do the same.

“And then come get back in here,” Richie says to Eddie’s retreating back, making Eddie freeze right there on the spot, like he’s got a dart in him. “Wait, actually, brush your teeth first. _Then_ come back. Go on then, man, hop to it.”

Eddie’s never, ever rushed into a gruelling interrogation with his mother. Delay has always been key. But this time, he all but hurls the desk chair away from the door and practically trips down the stairs to get to the phone. And once the predictably painful conversation is finally over, he trips in his haste all the way back up again.

*

**January 2012**

“What are you thinking about?” Richie asks, his voice a low murmur. “I can feel your brain, like, physically buzzing. It’s like being in a bed with Professor X.”

“I’m thinking I forgot to give my Peace Lily to anyone before I left and it’ll be fucking dead when I get back,” says Eddie.

“Well, that’s exactly what a guy wants to hear after sex.”

Eddie smirks. “I can think about two things at once.”

“Tell me what your apartment’s like in New York. With its dead plants.”

“Oh, you mean my cupboard? Well, a realtor would say it’s ‘cosy’, ‘historic’ with… ‘an efficient floorplan’. Meaning it’s too old for a reasonable utility bill, and if you stand in the middle of it you can reach everything with two hands.” He draws a lazy pattern on the duvet that’s too small to cover them both completely. “You can get up on to the roof, though, and the view is incredible. Plus there’s this bagel place a couple buildings down that puts its ovens on at, like, five a.m., so I wake up every morning feeling like I’m in some Dutch fairytale.”

“Sounds dreamy. Are you always gonna live in New York? People say it’s one of those places that gets its grip in you and never lets you go.”

Eddie considers this. Is there a reason he never left New York? Was it just easier to stay?

“I don’t know. I’ve never really been anywhere else,” he admits.

“Seriously?”

“Well, my ex and I spent a week in Jasper, Texas visiting his family once. It was pretty awful. I bet you’ve been all over.”

Richie shrugs. “Here and there.”

“I didn’t mean for that to sound quite so judge-y. I think it’s cool that you ended up with a job that lets you travel so much.”

Richie allows a couple of seconds to pass before saying lightly, “Now why do I get the feeling that isn’t true?”

Eddie twists to look at him. Richie is smiling, but it’s a slightly wry smile.

“Are you suggesting I resent your career path?” asks Eddie.

“Don’t you?”

“What makes you say that?”

“Just something you said when we met in The Three Tides the other day. You know. ‘You’re rich and famous, happy New Year’?”

Eddie cringes a little at being reminded of his own unpleasantness.

“Sorry. I was kind of being an asshole that night. In my defence, I _had_ just come from a wake.”

Something occurs to him. What was Richie doing on his own in The Three Tides that night anyway? When he hasn’t spent a Christmas with his family in years? But it seems too personal to ask, even given the current circumstances of their bare legs interlocked in a single bed.

“Do you like your job?” he asks instead.

“Yeah, of course,” Richie replies, without missing a beat.

“I used to listen to your morning show on the way home from my night shifts. Then they moved you up to the breakfast slot, and I was always asleep by then.” Eddie doesn’t mention that more often than not he’d switch the radio station over before the end of Richie’s show. That the initial buzz of hearing the voice of someone he once knew on the radio would invariably be scuppered by resentment – particularly if his shift had gone badly.

“I love doing the show,” says Richie. “They’ve got this twenty-something bleach-blond twink from Calabasas filling in for me while I’m here and it’s killing me. My mom has the show on every morning in the kitchen. I think she’s got it set to that station all the time, and she hasn’t realised she doesn’t actually need to listen to it while I’m here. Well, maybe she does. Maybe she tunes in for the music, and not for me.”

“The music kind of sucks, though.”

“I don’t actually get to pick it.”

“You’re kidding. And here I was thinking you just liked Nicki Minaj a lot more than The Melvins these days.”

“To be honest, I don’t mind her,” Richie grins. “Anyway, it might not be for much longer. My agent says radio is dying a slow, agonizing death and I need to jump ship before anyone sees me sinking.”

“And do what instead?”

He shrugs, playing with a loose thread on the duvet cover. “More TV. More presenting. There’s a lot of money in it. But I just feel like I’m getting too _old_ for it now. It’s like the credits rolled when I was twenty-five and I should’ve been liberated from ridiculous jeans and sticking a microphone under Z-listers noses a long time ago. I mean, I’m almost thirty-six. Shouldn’t I be in that stage of my career where I’m, like, wearing marl sweaters and horn-rimmed glasses and relinquishing myself from my partying days so I can… I don’t know… make pretentious, navel-gazing indie films or something?”

“Move to the wilderness? Some cabin in northern Wisconsin? Become a vegan?”

“ _Exactly_.”

“Yeah, I can just see it now. _Vice_ magazine. A picture of you standing in some field in a cotton, collarless shirt. Unclear whether it’s a little dirty or just off-white. Then a big bold headline: _Richie Tozier leaves world of wacky TV and breakfast radio to focus on creative and spiritual endeavours_.”

“I like it. All I need then is a couple of holier-than-thou posts on social media about the transcendent powers of making my own jam and I’ll be well on the way to a new, wholesome image.”

Eddie peers up at Richie where he leans against the old pine headboard. His eyes are closed, the warm light of the bedside lamp lighting one side of his face. Adulthood has made him handsome. It’s hard to imagine someone like Richie wanting to be somebody else. Eddie almost feels indignant about it.

They sleep on and off for a little while longer, drifting off in shifts, just missing each other every time. At one point they do wake drowsily together, nose to nose, and begin to kiss lazily, neither of them seeming to initiate it; rather, the two of them seem to just melt together, until a bedspring jams into Eddie’s leg and forces him to shift right up against the wall. Richie huffs a low laugh in his ear, his hand coming up to sweep Eddie’s hair back off his forehead. His thumb sweeps Eddie’s head twice more, smoothing over the thick, raised scar above his left temple, normally hidden by his hair.

“My battle scar,” Eddie mumbles. Richie strokes his thumb against it again, like he’s trying to rub it out.

“It’s where you fell, right? At school?” he says gently. “But I don’t remember why it was bleeding so much.”

“Because I cracked it off the corner of those fucking nineteenth century-looking wooden bleachers they had.”

Richie winces. “Man, it was like something out of _Kill Bill_. I never knew blood could look so _black_. Sorry, you probably don’t want – did you ever find out what caused it? Not the cut, I mean. The fainting.”

“Ask my mom and she’d tell you it was undiagnosed epilepsy. But the fact is, if you don’t eat enough or sleep enough or drink enough water, and then a shitty, tyrannical teacher makes everyone do laps because _one_ kid forgot his gym kit, you’re probably gonna faint.”

“Which kid forgot his gym kit?”

Eddie blinks, wondering why it matters. “I don’t know. I don’t really remember that part. No, you know what, I think it might’ve been that kid Ben, he used to forget it all the time.”

“Ben… Ben…? The one who had New Kids on the Block posters in his locker till, like, eleventh grade? So if it hadn’t been for _Ben_ , you’d never have been home schooled?”

Eddie scoffs. “I think that’s taking the concept of a butterfly effect a little too far. There was only one person responsible for me being taught at home by Tanya the fucking Terrible and it was my neurotic mother.” He shifts in bed. “Shall we talk about something else?”

Richie moves his hand away from Eddie’s head. “Oh yeah, sorry.”

“No, it’s okay, it’s just…” Eddie exhales through his nose and shuffles up the bed. “I’m sure there’s better memories to think about.”

It’s starting to get light out. He can see the dim orange glow of another day trying to break through the thin curtains. With it comes a budding self-consciousness over his body, naked save for the underwear he redeemed at about three a.m., and the mounting sense that last night will have repercussions. A stilted breakfast conversation. The awkward farewell. Self-loathing – it will hit him later, probably, when he’s in the shower or brushing his teeth – at giving himself over to Richie so easily. Giving in to the look and smell and physical weight of another person without stopping to consider how it might look. How it might imply that everything between them is healed; that what happened in the past doesn’t matter.

Eddie looks at him. Does it matter? Should it?

Richie smiles at him – a sleepy, soft kind of smile – and Eddie feels how he wants to give in again. He wants to snake a leg around him and pull him closer. He wants to kiss the dark, stubble-specked column of his neck. But they fall asleep again, and when they wake up, Richie is gone.

Eddie knows he shouldn’t be surprised, but a lump still rises to his throat when he realises he’s alone. Richie’s clothes, previously discarded on the floor, are gone. His phone isn’t on the night stand. And – somehow the most heart-breaking detail of all – he’s folded Eddie’s t-shirt and jeans and put them on a chair at the end of the bed.

Eddie gets up slowly and puts them on. He isn’t upset. He won’t be. He _won’t_.

Then he pads out into the hallway, and sees Richie in the kitchen, making coffee. The lump in his throat disappears. Instead, he just feels embarrassed by his own internal melodrama.

“Dude, it's like Miss Havisham's house in here. You had literally no food in the house except a couple pieces of stale bread,” says Richie, when Eddie comes into the kitchen. He’s bought breakfast food and fruit and decent coffee. “What have you been living on?”

“Caffeine and sheer willpower.”

Richie grins. He leans and kisses Eddie speculatively on the cheek, but they both seem to realise at the same time that it’s perhaps slightly too domestic. Richie promptly moves back to the coffee maker, and Eddie sits at the table and watches him. Richie’s hair has gone curly, immaculately messy, and looks better without all the product.

“So,” Richie says, finding two clean mugs. One has a picture of Neil Diamond on it. The other is polka dot pink and says _I’m only drinking coffee because I ran out of vodka_. “What’s your plan for today? How do you have your coffee by the way?”

“Oh, it’s okay, I can do it –”

“It’s fine! You have it black, right? I bet you have it black.”

Eddie shrugs and nods, sitting back down.

“I figured I might head over to that real estate agent on Central Street at some point. Try to organise getting this place valued.”

Richie glances at him. “You’re gonna sell it?”

“I certainly don’t want to live in it.”

“You could rent it out. I don’t know why but I can really see you as a landlord.”

“Thanks..? I thought about doing that but… I don’t really want to be tied to Derry. I just kind of want to get rid of this place and not have to come back. Is that completely heartless of me?”

Richie puts a mug down in front of him. The vodka one. He quirks a brow. “You really hate this town that much?”

Eddie shrugs. He twists the mug to pull it towards himself. The coffee is expensive and it smells amazing.

“It’s not that,” he says, although he’s aware it’s possible he may be lying. “I just don’t have anything keeping me here anymore.”

He’s aware that to someone more judgemental than Richie, this might sound like thinly veiled snobbery. As if he has some wonderful home, some great career, to rush back to in New York. Former small town boy desperate to return to his big, glittering city.

But all that’s waiting for him in New York is three different part-time jobs, rent arrears, and a chronic issue with black mold. The truth is, he can’t afford to live there, but it’s a truth he’s having difficulty accepting. He used to drive Uber, on top of the other jobs, but the car was his ex-boyfriend’s. If nothing else, he needs the money from his mother’s house to get him back on the road. Maybe back to doing Uber again. Maybe to get him the hell away from the East Coast entirely.

“How long are you planning on staying?” he asks Richie, slightly afraid of the answer. When he first arrived in Derry all he wanted was to be left alone; now it sounds like the worst thing in the world.

“I’m not sure,” Richie says airily, leaning against the counter top. “Strictly speaking, my ‘vacation’ lasts until the middle of the month, unless something important comes up. I was only supposed to be here for Christmas and a couple days after, but I ended up staying for New Year too.” He smiles at Eddie from behind his mug. “I’m glad I did.”

Eddie smiles back. Even if he wanted to remain cool and aloof, he couldn’t. Richie has the kind of face whose smiles demand to be mirrored.

“Besides,” he continues, “I miss seeing actual snow at Christmas, you know? December in LA is sort of fucking depressing. It’s like it doesn’t know what to do with itself.”

“So you’re telling me you’d give up all those wild celebrity Christmas parties just to freeze your ass off for a month?”

“Tell me where to find these parties. I’m usually working.”

“You are?”

“December is almost nothing _but_ live TV. Countdowns to midnight, charity concerts, live specials nobody asked for – it’s pretty non-stop. Why d’you think I haven’t graced my dear parents’ doorstep in so long? Speaking of.” He puts down his mug, taking out his phone and scrolling through what looks to be a horde of unanswered messages. “I guess I’d better spend some time with them today. They’ll have my fantastic face on a milk carton soon.”

“Sorry. You can blame me.”

Richie grins at him. “I _will_ blame you, Kaspbrak, and they’ll be absolutely delighted.” Then he’s back on his phone, tapping away intently, and Eddie’s lost him.

Midway through texting Richie's phone begins to buzz. He excuses himself from the table, in the airy way only a person used to constant calls can excuse themselves, and Eddie just catches the tail end of, “Yeah, man, of course I still want to,” before the kitchen door closes.

Eddie leans back in his chair, breathing out slowly. Regret is still yet to set in, even now the sun has fully risen and everything’s out in the open. This revelation unnerves him slightly, but otherwise he feels calm. He even has an appetite. He pulls the grocery bag towards him, can’t help but smile a little when he sees Richie still has an impossibly sweet tooth.

And so he’s here, eating breakfast, _hungrily_ , at his deceased mother’s kitchen table. He can hear the faint hum of Richie’s voice in the hallway. The closer sound of birds twittering from the windowsill. It is the most abnormal scenario he’s found himself involved with in a long time. Somehow, it’s the most normal he’s felt in days.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took a little longer to post, some dude decided to drive on the wrong side of the road and crash into the front of my car the other day which was SUPER FUN and has been taking up a lot of my time so yeah. if anyone wants to cheer up a gal who's possibly had her tiny car written off pls feel free to leave your thoughts and comments on this chapter, they're always lovely to read.
> 
> No warnings in this chapter really but there are some allusions to internalised homophobia

**November 1992**

Eddie’s mother doesn’t let him leave the house except for school for two weeks after that. Eddie still finds ways to see Richie all the time. It’s like he’s anchored within his gravitational field, unable to keep away.

That Sunday afternoon after Halloween when Eddie stumbled home, damp and greasy with his hangover, grinning wildly, his mother had hugged him for a long time, as if he’d been kidnapped and then returned to her; as if he’d been gone for days.

Then came the interrogation, the lecture, the shrieking. She seemed to believe that he was sick as much as she believed he was lying.

“I don’t blame you,” she’d said, just moments before bursting out with, “I want to be able to _trust_ you”

Then, hours later, when she was passed out in her chair in front of the shopping channel from a heady mixture of brandy and something which oughtn’t be mixed with it, Eddie had tip toed to the kitchen to dial the Toziers’ number on the landline, creeping as far back from the door as the plastic cord would allow.

Richie’s mother picked up – lovely, soft voice, always with a hint of amusement behind it, _of_ course _you can speak with Richie, hang on a tick, honey, I think he’s just destroying something in his bedroom_ – and then there was Richie, putting on some stupid voice, laughing when he realised Eddie was whispering, pleased when Eddie admitted he was about to go crazy if he didn’t speak to him.

Any worry that they might have lost the fervour of this morning – that Richie might go silent on him like the last time they kissed – was gone as soon as Richie dropped his own voice to a murmur and admitted he’d been going kind of crazy too.

And now, even with his mother triumphantly pulling the drawbridge up, as if she considers this some great victory, Eddie floats through November in a happy parade of secret looks and sticky notes slipped between the cracks of his locker and skipping lunch in favour of hungry, hurried moments in the sports shed. It’s turned cold and damp now but it’s the best secret refuge he and Richie can find.

Sometimes they skip whole lessons, if they think they can get away with it, and spend the hour pontificating personal theories and trading gossip and laughing at stupid things and kissing – there’s a lot of kissing. Eddie ends up buying ChapStick from the drugstore on his way home from school, which Richie seems to find funny.

“It’s just that you’re always so prepared,” he explains, sniggering when Eddie bats him irritably in the stomach. “You’ve got a little kit for everything. Even making out.”

It’s a good job they have the sports shed at all, because Eddie’s mother even gives up her beloved beauty nights at Aunt Marie’s temporarily, meaning Friday afternoon study sessions are off the table for the time being.

“I need to be here so I can keep an eye on you,” she says. “I’m _worried_ about you, Eddie.”

It doesn’t matter how many times Eddie insists he’s fine. He might as well be telling her he’s an alien from Jupiter for all she believes him. Any hope that she might just, with time, let the whole thing go, like any normal mother would, is snuffed out when she drags him to their family doctor the Saturday before Thanksgiving.

“Something just isn’t right,” she says, speaking on Eddie’s behalf. He must be the only seventeen-year-old in the western world whose mother still sits in on his doctor’s appointments.

Dr. Baynes clicks the end of his ballpoint pen and clears his throat. “Alright, symptoms?”

“Symptoms? Doctor, _look_ at him.”

Dr. Baynes looks. Eddie stares right back. He’s pretty sure there’s nothing particularly different about how he looks today, except that he’s wearing a 7 Year Bitch t-shirt Richie gave him, with a small hole in the sleeve. Perhaps this is what his mother is referring to.

“Uh, Mrs Kaspbrak –”

“He’s pale, he’s lost weight, and have you seen his gums?” She actually sticks a finger into Eddie’s mouth, yanking down his lower lip. “ _That_ is anaemia.”

“Well, the nurse weighed Eddie just before you came in. The good news is he’s actually _gained_ –”

“And that’s just what you can _see_. I mean, he’s tired all the time, he barely eats what I cook for him, he’s always complaining of headaches, his communication skills are practically non-existent since I had to re-enrol him in that school. I thought being around people was supposed to make you a _better_ conversationalist? I try to talk to him and at best I get a grunt.”

“You know, I _am_ in the room,” Eddie reminds her.

She stares at him, then fixes her astonished gaze back on Dr. Baynes. “Do you see what I mean?”

Clearly, the doctor doesn’t. He very discreetly glances at his watch.

“I let him go to his friend’s house a couple of weeks ago – against my better judgement, and believe me, I won’t make the same mistake twice – but he calls me the next morning, hours after he’s supposed to be home –”

“Hours?” Eddie echoes, incredulous.

“ – and tells me he’s ‘gotten sick’. Gotten sick! Overnight! Just like that!”

“Well, sickness does tend to have a point of origin somewhere, Mrs Kaspbrak.”

Eddie shifts his face to the side to hide his smirk, but his mother doesn’t seem to realise she’s being laughed at. She’s too engrossed in her story. Trips to their family doctor always seem to energise her.

“He just doesn’t seem like himself,” she says, interrupting Dr. Baynes' explanation of why fluctuating cortisol levels make people feel sicker at night. She’s not interested in the science; she’s interested in the medication. And the drama. “I’m worried about him, doctor.” She shifts demurely on the chair she is entirely too large for. “You know, I happened to be reading an article in one of my ladies’ magazines recently about epilepsy, and how there can be unexpected emotional symptoms –”

“Sonia,” Dr. Baynes says, the humour gone from his voice. “We’ve talked about this. I think in this situation it’s probably best to hear from the man himself, don’t you agree? Eddie? How do _you_ feel?”

“I feel fine!” Eddie insists. He’s desperate to leave. He checked out three new books on the Aztec empire on Friday, he’s got two new cassettes to listen to – one Pixies, the other Pearl Jam – and if his mom can knock herself out before seven p.m. again he might be able to fit in a phone call with Richie. He’s fully booked. “I don’t know what she’s talking about.”

“Eddie! Don’t talk about me like that in front of Dr. Baynes!”

“Sorry, but I just – I think you’re overreacting.”

“I think I’d perhaps be inclined to agree,” Dr. Baynes says, clicking his pen again and setting it to one side.

“Ex _cuse_ me?” his mother all but explodes.

Dr. Baynes is not a young man, and sometimes the very specific pitch and tone of Eddie’s mother’s voice is enough to make him jump in his seat.

“All I meant,” he says hastily, “is that I’m aware Eddie’s transition back into the public school system has been, ah… difficult for you. Your protective instincts are kicking in – and that’s perfectly natural, of course!”

He jams this last part on the end, and it’s all Eddie can do to keep from rolling his eyes. It’s not natural, the way his mother behaves. It’s utterly humiliating.

“Well, are you going to at least _check_ him?” she snaps. “Or do I have to do that myself too?”

So when Eddie has needlessly had his lungs and heart listened to, a torch shone into his eyes, his tongue inspected, and been told he isn’t anaemic, they’re allowed to leave.

Out on the street, his mother clutches his arm.

“Sweetie, I know you probably don’t want to hear this. Dr. Baynes has been our family doctor since before you were born and I know you think a lot of him, but this time, well… I just don’t think I can trust his word. I think we need to get a second opinion elsewhere.”

Eddie stops in the street. His mother has said terrible things to him before, but for some reason, what she’s saying now suddenly makes him so angry he feels winded.

“What are you _talking_ about?” he snaps, before he can stop himself. “A second opinion on _what_?”

“Your sickness, Eddie,” she says, like it’s obvious.

“I’m not sick!” He grasps for some sentence he can hurl at her, anything to wipe that infuriating look of concern off her face. “I wasn’t sick two weeks ago! Jesus, Mom, even _you_ know what a hangover looks like.”

She looks at him like he’s just slapped her – but that pious expression she’s fixing him with just enrages him even more.

“Why can’t you just _stop_?”

“You expect me to stop trying to help you? When there’s something clearly wrong?” she says, an awful wobble to her voice.

“But there isn’t! There’s nothing wrong!” People are looking at them now, awkwardly swerving them on the sidewalk, but Eddie can’t stop himself now he’s started. “I’m just trying to be normal but you won’t let me. It’s like you _want_ me to be a freak.”

“All I want is what’s best for you. That’s all I’ve _ever_ wanted. I’m acting the way a normal mother acts, Eddie, and you’re trying to make me feel terrible about it!”

“I don’t know any mothers like you. Richie’s mom doesn’t freak out about everything.”

He’s said it before he can stop himself. Her expression turns sour so instantly it’s slightly unsettling.

“ _Richie_?” she sneers, like the word itself tastes bad. “What does he have to do with anything? Or his tragedy of a mother, for that matter?” She folds her arms across her broad chest. She’s tall, and her shadow is massive. Sometimes Eddie forgets just how exceptionally she can loom over him. “Is that where you were on Halloween?”

He looks at the ground, not wanting to give her the satisfaction of an answer.

“I’m not sick,” he says again. “And you can’t keep me locked in the house like a prisoner.”

She stares at him. Her expression is horrible; one he doesn’t recognise.

“Fine,” she says softly, and she turns and starts towards the bus stop, which is not what he’s expecting at all. She isn’t screaming or shouting or crying. But somehow, it doesn’t feel like he’s won.

**

“So now she just doesn’t speak to me. Like, at all.”

“And that’s _not_ a good thing?”

“Richie.” Eddie rolls his eyes, hitting Richie in the stomach, but Richie grabs his hand and jams their fingers together.

“I’m just saying, she was always on at you and now it sounds like she’s giving you a break for once,” he says.

“I don’t know,” says Eddie, twisting his thumb around Richie’s, pressing the pads of their fingertips together. “It doesn’t really feel like that somehow. It feels… weird. Like she’s punishing me. I just don’t understand why everything has to be so extreme with her, you know? It’s like we can either do things her way or is this what I get. The idea of being even a little bit reasonable is just totally foreign to her.”

“Now who does that remind me of?”

“Hey!” Eddie separates their hands to whack him again. “Dick.”

“Ouch! I’m _kidding_ , jeez. Although you _are_ kind of proving my point.” Richie grabs hold of Eddie’s wrists to block any further attacks. “You know, you’ve got a lot of power in these tiny hands, Kaspbrak.”

“Fuck you, they’re not _tiny_.”

Eddie pulls away, rolling on to his side to prop his head up on his hand, trying to smother a smile. They’re lying on Richie’s bed, safe for now from any intruders. Richie’s mom’s at her weekend Tae Bo class. His father’s pottering around in the garden even though it’s cold out, Pixies turned up on Richie’s tape player to drown out the sound of his tools.

“You know you’re nothing like her, right?” Richie says, suddenly serious. “And just because she’s trying to make you feel bad, doesn’t mean you _have_ to feel bad. You haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Then why do I feel like I have?”

Richie softens. “Come on, Eds. It’s not a crime to _not_ be sick.”

“I don’t think it’s even that. Whether or not there’s really something wrong with me is sort of irrelevant. It’s almost like she’s disappointed in me for not being more… I don’t know. On guard? Prepared? It’s like just because my dad died, she thinks the only normal reaction is to constantly be terrified that I’ll be next.”

Eddie shifts again, rolling on to his back this time. He doesn’t want to look at Richie, because he has this expression on his face like he feels sorry for Eddie, which isn’t what Eddie wants.

“What was your dad like?” Richie asks.

Eddie stares up at the slanting ceiling. It’s the only part of Richie’s room that’s empty; clear and white. Outside the circular window, he can distantly hear a pair of ladders being clattered about.

“I don’t really remember him. He died when I was five. And when he was sick, I spent a lot of time with my aunts. I remember their fucking awful casseroles and Billy Joel records more than I remember him. I went to his funeral, though. Which, now I think about it, is maybe kind of fucked up. My mom was in pieces.”

He pauses to let Richie say something, but Richie – unusually – stays quiet. So Eddie carries on, picking idly at a loose thread on the comforter.

“But d’you know what I do remember? The crematorium that day was busy. Really, really busy. I guess people thought a lot of my dad. I like to think they did anyway.”

“I bet they did. I bet you’re just like him.”

Eddie turns his head on the pillow to look at him, and smiles a little. “Small? Bad-tempered?”

“No,” says Richie. “Just really, really awesome.”

He leans over and kisses Eddie’s nose very lightly. Eddie responds by nudging his face to Richie’s to kiss him on the mouth. He’s tired of talking. He’s grown heavy with it. He balls a fist in Richie’s t-shirt to keep him from trying to pull away to say something sensible. Richie’s version of sensible anyway. He’s glad when Richie doesn’t say anything at all, when he rolls Eddie on to his back again to deepen the kiss, anchoring Eddie’s other hand to the bed with his own.

Heavy footsteps begin to clunk up the steps leading to Richie’s bedroom, and the two of them spring apart. Richie lunges to the other end of the bed and pulls the crease from his t-shirt. Eddie’s hands fly up to his head to tidy his unkempt hair. He kicks pointlessly at the comforter, as if it looks suspicious.

“Are you two planning to spend the whole weekend in this damn stuffy attic?” Richie’s dad asks, popping his head round the door. He at least had the good grace to knock first, although he didn’t wait for an answer.

“Yeah, pretty much,” Richie says smoothly. He sits up to turn the music down, though it’s not quite casual enough that Eddie doesn’t notice his total change in demeanour.

“Sorry, let me rephrase that. Your mom’s been on at me to put the Christmas lights up and I heard there were two otherwise unoccupied teenage boys who very much wanted to help.”

Otherwise unoccupied. If only he knew.

Richie glances around his room coolly, pretending to look under his bed. “Don’t think they’re in here.”

His dad sighs. “Sling you both five bucks?”

“Eddie wants to stay for dinner.”

“Sure, that’s fine.”

“We’re getting pizza, right?”

He raises an eyebrow, drumming his large fingers on the doorframe. “You know, if there wasn’t actual danger of me falling to my death putting these lights up on my own, I’d tell you to get lost, kid. Downstairs in ten minutes, alright? I want to get these done before your mother comes back, otherwise she’ll be using her damn Tae Bo kicks on me.”

When he’s gone, Richie waits a few seconds longer than strictly necessary, then flops down next to Eddie again, rolling his eyes.

“ _Please_ tell me I’m not like _him_ ,” he says. When Eddie doesn’t respond, Richie gives him a hard nudge with his shoulder. “Eddie! Fuck.”

“Well, what am I supposed to say? You’re both tall, short-sighted, and laugh at your own jokes.”

“Ugh.”

“I like your dad. I think he’s kind of cool,” says Eddie, but Richie doesn’t accept the benediction.

“No, he’s not. If he was cool he wouldn’t always be…” Richie waves his hands, grasping for the word. “ _There_ all the time.” He looks at Eddie quickly. “Sorry. That was a dick thing to say.”

“Why? Oh, because of the dead dad thing? It’s okay.”

Richie snorts a laugh into his pillow, and Eddie looks at him.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“I know I’m a weirdo.”

“Hey, don’t hog the title, dude, we’re both fucking weirdos.” Richie tilts his head, his grin still etched on his face, black hair a mess of curls on the pillow. “No, I just really like it when you’re here.”

Eddie clears his throat, suddenly feeling sort of shy, which is ridiculous.

“Same,” he says quickly, and it’s hardly a declaration worthy of Jane Austen, but Richie’s smile stays where it is, and the ceiling of the earth doesn’t come crashing down around them, so it’ll do for now.

**

**December 1992**

“It’s Christmas day. Why would you choose to read _that_ on Christmas day?”

Eddie flits his eyes up over his book only briefly. He doesn’t like to look at his cousin any longer than is strictly necessary.

“ _Rethinking the Second World War: Who Really Won_?” Hunter says in a nasty voice, kicking back in Aunt Marie’s floral easy chair. “Is this what they’re teaching you in schools now? Anti-American propaganda?”

Hunter always likes to talk as if he’s years ahead of Eddie, both in age and wisdom, when in fact he’s only in his first year of college. He was still splattering apple sauce in a high chair at the same time Eddie was. Longer than, in fact, if family photo album evidence is anything to go by.

Between Hunter’s chair and Eddie’s, Uncle Miles and Uncle Alec take up either end of the sofa, practically comatose in front of the _John Denver: Country Christmas_ special. They don’t seem to mind when Hunter speaks right across them.

“Did you know,” he says, clicking his finger at Eddie like a gun, “we produced more airplanes in World War II than _all_ the other major war powers combined? In Michigan, they turned out a B-24 heavy bomber every _hour_. One of our shipyards could mass-produce a Liberty merchant ship from scratch in a _week_.”

The silence which follows suggests Eddie is supposed to respond.

“Uh,” he finally ventures. “Cool.”

“And you’re gonna sit there and question who won the war?”

“I’m not really questioning anything, I’m just… trying to read.”

After winter break they’re moving on to modern history at school, and Eddie’s ignored pretty much all his other homework so he can get started on World War II. He used the money from Richie’s dad to buy his mother a new leather-bound diary with little embroidered tulips on it for Christmas, and the tiny amount of change to buy the history book from a second hand store.

In hindsight, he might as well have blown the whole lot on books. His mother didn’t seem enthused by the diary when she unwrapped it this morning. Aunt Liz bought her a postcard signed by Billy Joel in 1973 from a memorabilia shop in Dexter, which just about eclipsed every other gift.

“You know,” Hunter continues, seemingly unable to shut up, “if this were 1955, you’d be tried for Communism for reading something like that.”

Eddie rolls his eyes behind the book. “You don’t even know what it’s about,” he mumbles, but Hunter still hears him.

“Well, I can see the title and I can see an American flag with a question mark made out of fire on the front cover. That’s practically tantamount to flag-burning. Yep. You’d be strapped up in Old Sparky next to the Rosenbergs, the _artistes_ , and the fags before you could say _card-carrier_.”

“Sweetie, don’t let’s talk about Communism, it’s Christmas,” says Aunt Liz, bustling in with a plate of sugar cookies. In keeping with Hunter’s 1950s theme, she and the other women have been delegated to the kitchen for the day, and none of the males are permitted to help.

It isn’t talk of Communism, or electric chairs, or Hunter getting the year of the Rosenberg execution wrong that rattles Eddie, though. He’s read a little about McCarthyism. He’s never considered it as being remotely connected to himself.

“I’m just saying, Ma, a little moral panic wouldn’t go amiss these days,” says Hunter, leaning forward and snatching three cookies at once. He’s a swimmer at college, and has the body – and face – of a minotaur.

He won’t stop blathering on even when they’re all seated around Aunt Marie’s huge walnut dining table for Christmas dinner later that afternoon. He leans back in his chair, gazing heavenwards, as if receiving his diatribe from some celestial being.

“You don’t know how good it is to be back here with a proper meal, cooked at home by three women who know what they’re doing. The dining halls at college are a minefield. Mass-produced crap that relies almost exclusively on deep frying or mystery meat.”

“I have to send him food parcels,” Aunt Liz says solemnly.

“Thinking about college, young Ed?” asks Hunter.

“Um.” Eddie pushes lurid cranberry sauce around his plate. He hates when people call him Ed. It makes him sound like a fey TV puppet. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Great history programmes at Columbia. I’d only recommend that if you’re planning to teach, though. Kind of a waste of time otherwise, huh?”

“Eddie’s not going to New York,” Eddie’s mother chuckles, although with a distinct firmness to her voice, as though the very idea is too ludicrous to warrant further discussion. She may as well be saying Eddie’s not boarding a spacecraft to Neptune.

“Why not? It’d do him some good. Challenge him a little.” Hunter turns to Eddie and scoffs, loading his fork up with food. “Introduce him to the real world. Sure, you have to dodge a fair few freaks in The Big Apple, same as any city, but once you know where they hide you know the places to avoid.”

“Freaks?” says Eddie, curiosity piqued.

Hunter waves a hand. “You know what I mean. Homeless people. Junkies. Drag queens, queers –”

“Sweetie, could we not –” Aunt Liz tries.

“Oh, he’s right,” Aunt Marie butts in, red-faced and slightly drunk. All three sisters have been on the brandy since two o’clock, and it shows. “We visited New York in – ’82, was it, Miles? ’83? My God. It’s like a big, filthy mall. Meth addicts and cross-dressers on every damned corner. And the _heat_ – well, I mean, it gave Miles hives. We had him indoors for two days with a wet towel on his backside. Trust me, Sonia, you don’t want your son ending up in a place like that. Lizzie’s boy can handle himself, but Eddie, well…”

She turns to look at him from the other end of the table. They all do.

“What?” he says, uncomfortable under the scrutiny.

“Eddie, don’t say _what_ like that,” says his mother, as if her nephew hasn’t just spent the last five minutes stuffing everything in his line of view into his mouth and talking at the same time.

The festive vitriol continues until everyone – with the exception of near-mute Uncle Alec – has joined in; drag queens, immigrant workers, lesbians (though they all seem to think they might burn if they use the actual word) and anyone who lives in Greenwich Village all come under the sudden gush of fire. Eddie sits there, a reluctant audience member, wondering if it’s possible to lobotomize himself with a dessert fork.

The conversation plays on his mind all night, long after Neil Diamond’s _The Christmas Album_ has ceased spinning and the frosting has been picked clean off the Christmas cake. It’s still on his mind when Richie calls him on the landline the next morning and asks if they can meet up.

Eddie has to wait until his mother is snoring brandy breath in front of the television, her slippered feet propped on her favourite coral pouffe at around seven p.m., before he can pull on his duffle coat and slip out the front door.

They meet down by the canal, even though it’s freezing and the water has turned to grey ice. They don’t have much choice; Richie’s family’s Christmases tend to last for days. “My house is a literal nightmare right now,” he’d explained on the phone earlier. “If you come here, you’ll be force-fed Mom’s poisonous mulled wine and find yourself embroiled in an apparently never-ending game of Twister with my apparently never-not-drunk cousins. Three of them are sleeping on my bedroom floor. It’s a real party.”

Richie is late, but when he shows up he smiles as if he’s not. He looks particularly nice today, Eddie thinks. He’s had his hair cut, probably forced to by his mother in preparation for their holiday guests, but it makes him look more grown up. They haven’t seen each other in a few days, and Eddie’s heart leaps into his throat at the sight of him. He knows it’s probably ridiculous to feel like that about someone he’s known since he was eight, but any and all physical reactions he has to Richie Tozier seem to be entirely involuntary.

Richie gives him a hug, but they don’t kiss. Eddie likes to think that in a different world – the one they’ll inhabit when they’re older, maybe, when Richie’s at college and Eddie’s got a job doing… well, _something_ – they will greet each other’s tired faces every morning with a sleepy, warm sugar kiss, and do the same before they go to bed at night. And maybe they’ll live somewhere like Chelsea, in New York, which Hunter says is full of “them”, but which Eddie thinks sounds like a glorious bohemia, and they’ll even be able to kiss outside. When Eddie imagines this particular scenario, he invariably pictures an exclusively male version of the V-J Day Kiss.

For now, the best they can do is lean side by side against the wooden railings of The Kissing Bridge. Named by Derry High kids after what it’s famous for, it isn’t as romantic as its moniker suggests. The railings are a minefield of dried bubblegum and splinters, and in summer the brown water below dribbles along murkily.

Eddie looks down at the frozen sludge of the canal now while Richie regales him with the story of how his aunt’s Irish wolfhound jumped on the kitchen island and ate three quarters of the turkey on Christmas day so they had to go to a Chinese restaurant instead, and then his aunt cried because Richie’s dad suggested dogs shouldn’t be encouraged to walk on kitchen surfaces.

“And then she said she doesn’t even like coming to our house for Christmas and she only does it out of a sense of duty to my dad’s brother, and that if she had it her way she’d spend Christmas in Bora Bora in a Silenor-induced coma.”

“What did your dad say?”

“He said fine, but if she does that next year we’re not dog-sitting. How was your Christmas?”

When they’ve finished swapping stories, it’s time to swap gifts. Eddie’s never really had an allowance. His mother just goes through odd spates of giving him five bucks here, ten there, when she happens to find Eddie particularly amenable. He had six dollars saved in a Daffy Duck moneybox on his dresser. The greater issue was knowing what to get for Richie –a boy who already has everything he wants.

Comestibles seemed the safest option in the end. Eddie rode his bike to The Soda Hut a few days before Christmas and bought several dollars’ worth of Richie’s favourites: blue coconut popcorn, black cherry jawbreakers, sour punch twists, Snickers, and, the king of all kings, Doritos. Richie’s white teeth seem to be permanently immune to cavities, no doubt the handy result of having a dentist for a father, but even Eddie is slightly concerned by his own lack of discernment regarding sugar content as he hands the gift over.

Richie laughs, delighted.

“As soon as the Clampetts have gone you need to come to mine for a horror movie marathon so you can help me make a dent in this,” he insists, squeezing Eddie’s arm. “I promise to try not to eat all of it before then.”

Richie’s gift to Eddie is a gigantic bar of Almond Joy (kind of sweet, really, considering he mocks Eddie endlessly over it being his favourite – it’s sissy chocolate, apparently) and another mixtape. This time titled _Eddie’s Mix 2.0_.

“I figured now you actually know I have a crush on you, I could put the slushy stuff on without it being weird.”

“Meaning you had already had a crush on me while you were making the first one?” Eddie asks, unable to keep the grin from his lips.

Richie nudges him with his shoulder. There’s a slightly embarrassed look on his face which Eddie isn’t used to, and which he finds pretty delightful.

“Nah, I jump all my friends while we do homework,” he says, turning on the spot and kicking his foot shyly against a railing of the bridge. “It’s kind of my thing.”

Eddie turns the tape over and over in his cold hands, rubbing his thumb over the plastic-covered tracklist it’s clear Richie has tried so painstakingly hard to write neatly.

 _Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me_ , he’s written in tiny black print, and just seeing that word in Richie’s spiky handwriting makes Eddie’s chest flutter.

“Richie,” he says carefully, “can I ask you something?”

“Fire away.”

With the tape in his hands, Eddie feels different. Like he really belongs to someone at last. It makes him brave enough to ask the question.

“Do you like other guys? I mean... the way you like me?”

Richie studies him for such a long time Eddie can’t predict what he’s going to come out with.

“I don’t understand what you’re asking me,” he says finally.

Eddie is surprised. It is, he thinks, for all intents and purposes, a reasonably straightforward question. He can only shrug.

“I’m only interested in you,” Richie tries, but he says it with a rising intonation, like a question, as though he’s just trying to land on an answer he thinks Eddie will accept.

“That’s not really what I mean,” says Eddie. He licks his lips. “My cousin goes to college in New York. Yesterday he was saying all this stuff about the kinds of people who live there. On Fire Island and in Greenwich Village and… there’s San Francisco too. And L.A. And normally, I wouldn’t even pay attention because he’s such a loser, right, but then I realised… he was talking about _me_. About us, you know? And I realised, like, we’re part of this collective now. This whole other _thing_.”

Richie doesn’t say anything, so Eddie persists.

“You know what I mean, right?”

“Yeah,” Richie says, a little snippily.

“I’m talking about gay people –”

“ _Yes_ , Eddie, I get it. Look, we’re not part of any ‘collective’, okay? There’s a huge difference between dudes going to creepy acid parties on Fire Island and two ordinary guys from Derry.”

Eddie considers this for a few long seconds, brows furrowed. “What’s creepy about it?”

“You know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t. Tell me.”

Richie sighs. He thrusts his hands into his pockets and turns to look at Eddie without quite meeting his eye.

“Look, I don’t wanna think about what anyone else would call this. I don’t care. It’s just you and me, okay?”

“But what if it isn’t?” says Eddie, before he can stop himself.

“What do you mean?” Richie suddenly looks worried. Eddie isn’t used to seeing that expression on his face either.

“I don’t mean that I want us to stop,” Eddie quickly clarifies. “I just mean, _if_ we ever did… or if we never even started in the first place… would I still be like this?”

He doesn’t intend for Richie to answer; he already knows the answer himself. Has maybe known the answer for a long time.

“I think I would, you know. I guess I just wondered if you felt the same way.” He shrugs, slightly put out. “I don’t know, I thought I could talk to you about this kind of thing.”

“Well, I don’t really wanna talk about it,” Richie mumbles.

Eddie can’t understand why he’s being so weird all of a sudden. It’s not like Richie has ever been ashamed – of _anything_. He kissed Eddie first. Surely that has to mean something?

Eddie considers pointing this out, but doesn’t.

“I’m not suggesting we tell anybody,” he says instead. “I’m not stupid, Richie. So you don’t have to freak out about being honest with me.”

“I’m not freaking out,” says Richie, even though he absolutely is.

He suddenly digs in his jacket pocket, producing his house keys, his miniature penknife dangling from one of the metal rings. He drops down so that he’s crouching, and with one hand steadying himself on the top wooden bar, he begins digging the knife into one of the railings, tongue between his teeth in concentration. When he stands back, Eddie can see it: a wobbly _R + E_ , forever carved into the infamous bridge.

“There,” he says, clearly proud of his handiwork. “That’s _my_ collective.”

Eddie smiles at him, because it’s sweet, though he can’t help but think Richie’s just avoiding the wider issue.

Still, there’s something Eddie likes a lot about the carved initials. How quick Richie was to brand the bridge with them; how pleased he is by the result. Eddie would kiss him for it, as the bridge’s name dictates, if they were outside their imaginary Chelsea tenement. If they were anywhere but here.

Judging by Richie’s reaction to the conversation they’ve just had, Eddie decides to keep this particular fantasy of the future to himself for now.

**

**January 2012**

Much to Eddie’s irritation, Town & Port Real Estate Agents are still closed for the holidays when he gets there around midday. This is the problem with small towns, he realises. In the city, you’ll be hard pressed to find a business that isn’t open three hundred and sixty five days of the year, manned endlessly by overworked desk jockeys and minimum wage students. Which, of course, is somewhat morally deplorable, but occasionally preferable from a consumer’s point of view to the small town independent business approach, which is that if Janet on the front desk wants a couple of days rest while the weather’s nice, or Clark the cleaner is hungover or wants to host an impromptu barbeque for everyone, it’s somehow fair game to shut a whole business down indeterminately.

Town & Port established themselves in 1972, their signage says. They’re the only real estate agents in Derry. Eddie’s parents probably bought their own house through them. He gazes at the cards lining the front window, rows of old saltbox houses with steep roofs and Victorian spindles and scrollworks, their shingles painted sugar almond pink and cherry red and baby’s breath white. It’s quite a pretty town, Eddie supposes, beneath all its soot and rain.

He starts back up the street the way he came, then stops dead outside the drug store, not quite able to believe his eyes. He’s sure that’s Mike standing in front of the Dunning Butcher Shop with a brown paper bag. Eddie knows lives intersect easily in small towns, but this is slightly ridiculous. Who’s he going to run into next? Bill Denbrough, plugging his latest bestseller in Gerald’s Book & Bible Store? Henry Bowers strolling down the street wielding a pocket knife?

Maybe everyone knows the world is going to end this year, so they’ve come back to Derry to say their goodbyes.

Mike smiles very faintly at Eddie, but it’s clear he doesn’t recognise him. He’s smiling only because Eddie is undisguisedly staring.

“Mike?” he says, drawing closer.

“Uh,” says Mike. “Yes?”

He’s still smiling. Even as a kid Mike was always impeccably polite; unerringly warm.

“Sorry – you don’t recognise me, do you? I’m Eddie… Eddie from…” He almost says Derry, and then remembers they’re already here.

It doesn’t matter, though, because realisation suddenly dawns on Mike’s unexpectedly handsome face.

“Eddie! My God, I didn’t – I’m sorry, I don’t know why I didn’t recognise you.” He tucks his paper bag under one arm and puts two firm hands on Eddie’s shoulders, heavy like weights. “How long’s it been, my friend?”

“Thirteen years?” Eddie says, hating the words as soon as they leave his lips.

Thirteen years and now he’s back in Derry? His mother dead? The world ending? He tries to avoid numerical superstitions in an attempt not to add unnecessarily to the ever-growing pile of neuroses he already has clogging up his brain. But he can’t help the unpleasant feeling that unfurls in his gut when he says the number out loud.

Mike, of course, is a comparatively normal person, and remains unperturbed. He pauses, and Eddie can practically see the questions and curiosities crystalizing in his eyes.

“What brings you back to Derry after all this time?” he asks.

Eddie is surprised Mike doesn’t already know. He thought everyone in this town knew when someone died or was born or got married or sprained their wrist or bought a loaf of bread. Then again, Eddie’s mother always kept out of the Hanlons’ way, being that she was more or less a closet racist.

He explains briefly about the funeral, not wanting to make Mike uncomfortable. Mike is predictably kind and sympathetic.

“I’m sorry, man. She was a nice lady.”

Eddie knows it’s not polite to disagree with him, so he just nods.

“Well, look, I was just grabbing a sandwich before I head back to work. Why don’t you come and have lunch with me?” Mike continues. His smile is genuine, but Eddie still hesitates.

“Oh, I don’t wanna take up your time…”

“Nonsense! Hey, I haven’t had lunch with someone else in a long time so I’d be happy for the company. We can catch up. You won’t believe where I work.”

Eddie had made the quick assumption that the only reason Mike is still in Derry is because he’s taken over his family’s sheep farm. He’s quite taken aback when Mike leads him down the frosty streets to Derry’s public library.

“My apartment’s up here,” he says, pointing to an iron staircase running up the side of the old brick building.

“You… live here?” says Eddie.

“Perks of the job, I guess. Where are you working now? Hell, man, where are you _living_?”

“New York,” Eddie answers, glad Mike asked two questions so that he can safely avoid one. “I never knew this apartment was up here.”

Mike unlocks the door with a heavy set of keys. “It’s a little gloomy, but I like it well enough.”

As Eddie follows him in, he has that same dislocating feeling he’s been experiencing all week, where it feels like everything is flitting too fast, like the pages of a book being skimmed. Half an hour ago he was dragging himself into town to carry out the mundane task of trying to get a valuation on his mom’s tired old house. Now he’s standing in the apartment of Mike Hanlon, a man he hasn’t seen in thirteen years and who is now, apparently, the town librarian. Mike, who as a kid would devour heavy books during the week and wield a bolt pistol on the weekends.

They’d been good friends once. The only two home-schooled kids in town. Eddie’s mother had allowed him to study with Mike and his grandfather on the frequent occasions that the extremely useless Tanya-from-Bingo had been too hungover to show up. His mother wasn’t exactly happy about the arrangement – not only as a result of the aforementioned closet racism, but because she didn’t think Leroy Hanlon was fit to be any sort of teacher – but even she knew it was better than nothing. So she’d pack Eddie off with an exercise book and his medicine and his lunch, waving to him from the doorway like a wartime mother sending her child off to evacuation.

Mike’s house on the farm had been warm and cosy, smelling almost perpetually of the salty soup his grandmother used to make with beef stock and knuckle bones. Eddie always loved the days when Tanya didn’t show up.

They’d drifted apart once Eddie returned to public school and Richie came back into the picture. But then, it wasn’t just Mike this happened to; Richie eclipsed everybody.

Eddie had felt bad about it afterwards – after he’d stopped speaking to Richie; after that long, lonely senior year – but Mike never seemed to hold any grudges. He used to come into the diner Eddie worked at once he graduated high school. He’d chat to him pleasantly, never intrusively.

Eddie can’t believe he’s still here. Living above the library. Eating his lunches alone. Apparently – quite unbelievably – unmarried. Mike’s handsome, and kind, and a quick glance around his small apartment reveals he’s clean. Perhaps a little untidy, but Eddie’s ex used to remind him frequently how obsessive levels of cleanliness and precision were slightly unattractive. A little clutter can be charming.

Mike gives him a potted autobiography. His grandparents are dead. The farm’s been sold. He’s been a librarian for eleven years, as well as an amateur historian.

“What kind of history?” Eddie asks, intrigued.

“Local mainly. I’m working on a book. I’ll have to send you a copy when it’s done. That’s assuming anybody wants to publish it, of course.”

“A book about Derry?”

The confusion must show on Eddie’s face, because Mike laughs.

“It’s actually a pretty fascinating place, once you dig into it.”

Everyone thinks the place they come from is significant, the same way people think their star signs or surnames or school alumni are significant. But Maine is an old place, a little ignored, and the combination of these two things might make for unexpected historical facts that even Eddie isn’t aware of.

“So what do you do for a living?” Mike revisits the same question from before, but continues enthusiastically before Eddie can answer, “Do you remember when we were kids, and you told my Grandpa you wanted to be a custodian of some big old historic house, and he laughed and said you were the first fourteen-year-old he’d ever met who didn’t want to be a footballer or a lawyer? He found that so funny. Kept saying you were wise beyond your years. So go on then, impress me. Which one is it? Washington Irving’s house? Edgar Allan Poe’s?”

Eddie stares at him, then realises he’s supposed to answer.

He doesn’t know why he tells the truth, when he couldn’t even tell it to Richie.

“I work in a hospital. And no, I’m not a doctor.” He tries to sound light, jokey, but when Mike doesn’t say anything, Eddie elaborates further just to fill the silence, buoyed by the kindness in Mike’s eyes. “And I work in a hotel bar. I mean, when I’m not at the hospital.”

“Oh!” says Mike, but not like he thinks it’s bad. “That’s cool. I like it! Hotel bar in New York City, huh? I bet you meet a lot of interesting people.”

“You know what? I used to work at the DMV and the people who came in there were a lot more interesting. Buzz Aldrin came in once. Told me what venting piss into space is like. Apparently it’s very pretty.”

Mike laughs. “You know, Eddie, you’re really brave. Bars, hospitals? The goddamned DMV? Man, you have to be made of steel to deal with the folk in those places.”

Eddie has never really considered it this way before. He’s always worked in customer-facing jobs, and has always been pretty good at shutting down any bullshit post haste. He can imagine how this is surprising to Mike, who’s only really known Eddie as a moon-eyed kid. By the time Eddie got to New York, twenty-three years old and virginal in almost every sense of the word, he was so bitter and full of anger that he could have taken on a job as a prison warden, all one hundred and twenty five pounds of him, and still come out the other side unscathed.

He remembers the day he left. His mother babbling hysterically in the hallway as he packed, insisting he’d never be able to handle himself in a city, that he didn’t have the heart or mind for it. He saved tips from the diner for two years, and kept the secret of his escape from her for just as long.

Eddie declines Mike's offer of lunch, still full from breakfast, but he lets Mike make him a cup of Darjeeling tea on the little green stove in the kitchen area. Mike whistles as he makes it, comfy in a soft sweater and shirt combo, warm in the old roof of the library. Eddie can’t help but smile. He seems happy.

“So what made you choose to stay in Derry?” Eddie asks, as Mike slides the hot mug towards him. “Just the job, or…?”

“I’m not married or anything, if that’s what you mean,” Mike smiles. “I don’t know really. I took care of my grandparents when they couldn’t carry on anymore. By that point I was in my late twenties, and I guess I started to see the town through a new lens. Stopped looking at it as somewhere that’d trapped me. Started seeing it as somewhere that’d shaped me. Somewhere that I fit. Trust me, I’m not saying it’ll be forever. The winters seem to get more miserable every year, and I could sure do with some real sun.” He smiles into his tea, the steam dancing gently in front of his kind eyes. “But there’s something ancient about Maine that I find kind of captivating. I guess you could call it sacred.”

Mike’s always been a little dreamy – Aunt Liz would call it 'being away with the fairies’ – so Eddie isn’t surprised by this slightly transcendental interpretation of their dull home state.

But as he walks back down Center Street, once Mike’s returned to work, he wonders if there’s something in it. Maine’s human history spans thousands of years, after all. Land and water can accrue a lot of energy in that time.

His father took him to Rangeley Lake once, before he died. Although Eddie doesn’t remember much about it – for example, how they got there, or whether his mother was pleased about it, or what he was wearing that day – he remembers his father telling him that the lake had real magic underneath it. Prompted by the memory, Eddie looked the place up years later and found that the lake is near the exact centre point between the North Pole and the Equator, leading some people to believe the water possesses some mystical energy force.

Eddie doesn’t know about any of that, but he knows that wading into the lake with his dad, dusty blue mountains crowded in the distance, was like descending into another world, and when it started to go dark his dad wrapped him in a blanket on the grass so they could listen to the loons echoing their eerie calls across the clear, violet lake. It was so hushed, so untroubled. Maybe he could call that sacred.

*

When Eddie gets back to the house, he decides to tackle the bathroom. It’s still almost clinically clean but for a thin layer of dust that’s gathered since the house has been empty. Even in her final weeks, his mother was fastidious when it came to germs.

Emptying the tall cabinet of her toiletries is as simple as lodging his arm round the back of each shelf and sweeping everything into a garbage bag. But when Eddie comes to clear out the mirrored cabinet above the sink, he stops dead.

He glanced in it once, briefly, upon his initial arrival, tired and bewildered from the journey, anxious about the impending funeral. Now he’s looking at it properly, he finds the contents vaguely disturbing, like Janet Leigh walking into the taxidermy room in _Psycho_. Something which could be perceived as innocuous, but clearly isn’t.

The cabinet is stuffed with boxes and boxes of medicine.

Old medicine, as well as recent. Some of it has his mother’s name on the box, but mostly it’s _(Mstr.) Edward Kaspbrak_ printed in conjunction with dilantin, amoxicillin, zolpidem, theophylline, strong antihistamines, liquid sleeping aids. Alongside those there are plastic droppers and measuring cups, cylindrical dosing spoons, inhalers, Band-Aids patterned with dinosaurs and Mickey Mouse.

He stares at it all, the countless boxes yellow with age.

Why did she keep it all? He can’t comprehend it. It’s like it’s been _collected_.

And what’s he supposed to do with it? He knows he shouldn’t throw it in the trash. He’s supposed to take it to the pharmacy, ask about a mail-back program or a disposal kiosk. But just the thought of stepping foot in Derry’s drugstore makes him feel sick. Even now, the antiseptic stench of the big chain ones in the city make him queasy.

A memory flashes in his mind, as he closes the mirror door and is greeted, once again, by his own worn-out face. Richiepeeking into the cabinet on one of the rare occasions Eddie’s mother wasn’t home over winter break, begging Eddie to let him try something ‘super strong’. His disappointment upon popping three pills and realising they weren’t getting him high, that they were in fact making him sleepy.

Eddie smiles at the memory. They were idiots, a lot of the time. With Richie, everything always seemed like a good idea. Even impossible things seemed like that could work.

He abandons the trash bag on the bathroom floor and heads to the kitchen for a much needed caffeine fix. Richie has kindly left the expensive coffee on the counter.

Eddie thinks about texting him. Wonders why Richie hasn’t texted first. Maybe last night was a one-off? It would make sense. Richie isn’t the kind of person who has to make do with slim pickings. Money and reputation dictate that he can have any guy he wants – does so frequently, if various online news tabloids are to be believed.

The thought feels unpleasant, and Eddie is annoyed that it does. He’s been doing okay on his own, hasn’t he? God know it was a relief to finally heave himself, gasping, from the clutches of his last relationship.

And yet, now he’s back here with the guy who chomped on his heart twenty years ago, and Eddie’s aware he’s encouraging it to happen all over again.

There’s a slight shallowness to it, of course – Richie is attractive – but seeing him again like this seems to have uprooted some long-ago feeling of, not _love_ exactly, but cohesion. An easy, familiar tenderness that seems to fit snugly around them both.

He shakes his head to shake the thought away. His mind drifts back to the medicine for something else to focus on. Eddie now considers with new eye the baby photos on the walls, the clay fridge magnets sculpted by his six-year-old hands. His old bedroom, untouched. The whole house is like a museum dedicated to him – but specifically a prepubescent version of him. The pre-Richie version. The child version. The malleable version.

He stands suddenly and strides back into the bathroom, yanking the light cord. He opens the cabinet, lifts the trash bag, and sweeps the contents of the cabinet into it. A few boxes miss the bag and scatter across the floor. Eddie grabs them and stuffs them into the bag.

Then he goes to the kitchen and yanks the handmade magnets from the fridge. One was holding up a flyer for the County Fair, and when he takes it away the flyer drops to the floor, along with a photograph previously hidden behind it. He puts the flyer in the trash bag and picks up the photograph.

It’s of him. The back says _Marie and Miles’s Garden, July 1982_ , making Eddie six years old.

He had just gotten over pneumonia. He knows that because in the photo he’s wearing a blue Looney Tunes t-shirt brought to him as a gift in hospital. He’s sitting on his mother’s lap in a garden chair, one hand clutching an ice lolly (the wooden stick wrapped in tissue paper because he hated getting his hands dirty) and his other arm thrown tightly around his mother’s neck, his face pressed to hers.

He’s smiling in the picture; a big, gappy grin. She’s smiling too. Her hands are clasped around his waist, the way you would prop a baby on your lap to show it off.

Dappled sunlight peeps through tree leaves and shadows parts of their faces, but Eddie can still identify the look in his mother’s eyes. It’s pride. He’s not surprised this is the only photo she’s put on the fridge – something she would have to see every day. It’s because, in this photo, he’s young. Eager for the embrace, not just acquiescing to it. Made weak and affectionate by illness. This was the version of him she found easy to love.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> first of all thank you SO much for the kind comments on the last chapter, both about the chapter and my car accident lolol. i am fine and my car is still moving but thank you all for your concern <3
> 
> warnings for bullying, (mild) physical violence, references to homophobia & internalised homophobia, and underage drinking. and gard jagermeyer, remember that guy?

**January 1993**

It’s been written in permanent marker, so it can’t be rubbed off. There, on a dirty grey tile, just between the cubicle door and the toilet roll dispenser.

_Eddie Kasbrak sucks cock_

Barely pausing to think about it, Eddie digs in his bag for his own black marker and leans in gingerly, careful not to touch the wall with his hand, and adds in the missing _p_.

“What are you doing?” Stan asks, alarmed.

“They spelt my last name wrong.”

Stan stares at him, then whips the pen from Eddie’s hand, nudging him out of the way and scribbling black ink over the entire message until it glistens.

“You’ve just made it worse,” says Eddie.

“How?”

“They’ll think _I_ did that.”

“Well, it’s better than having it there for everyone to see.”

Eddie privately disagrees. In his experience, it’s better to be blasé about these things. He learned this in fifth grade, when Debbie O’Loughlin tried to start a rumour that he collected dead ants because he believed they possessed antibacterial properties. She’d been driven almost to the point of madness when Eddie’s reaction was to act as if he’d never heard of the rumour at all, like he’d just been slightly out of earshot every time it was mentioned.

Thanks to Stan, everyone is going to believe that Eddie erased the declaration on the wall of the boys’ bathroom himself. Denial will only make things worse. Not that confirmation is an option either.

And besides, he doesn’t. Suck anything, that is.

They’ve talked about it, he and Richie. Abstractly, usually, while watching movies in Richie’s bedroom. One Saturday not long ago they got as far as unzipping each other’s jeans before Richie’s mother came clattering up the stairs and they’d sprung apart within a fraction of a second, in equal parts frustrated and relieved.

“Come on,” Stan says presently, tugging at Eddie’s elbow. “Hanging around in here won’t help anything.”

Stan spends most of his time being practical, and the rest of it asleep. They make their way outside to get to the converted shipping container that doubles as a Social Studies classroom.

The new rumour, while admittedly not unfounded, seems an odd diversion from Eddie’s reputation as The Plague Carrier, or the boy people have to keep three feet away from in case he faints on them.

Eddie’s only thinking that it seems especially odder still that no one has alluded to the new rumour out loud when, as if on cue, a voice nearby crows, “ _Hey Kaspbrak, throat a little dry?_ ” and what’s left of a Big Gulp follows a second after, splattering with a wet thunk against Eddie’s chest and drenching his front like a popped water balloon.

“What the fuck?” he yelps. He's unable to rely on his usual method of wilful ignorance when there’s sticky purple soda dripping from his chin and hands and t-shirt. He lifts his hand gingerly; it’s even in his hair.

Eddie looks up at the perpetrator. Some kid he barely even knows, one of the lanky sporty types who flits between different outer circles like an irritating housefly. He holds his hands up in mock-surrender, pleased with himself.

“Sorry, just trying to help!” he grins, before bolting with his equally as delighted friend.

“Kaspbrak!”

Eddie spins on the spot, almost expecting a Dr. Pepper to the face, a 7-Up to the groin. Gittelman looms over him, blocking out the wintery sun. He’s wearing shorts even though it’s freezing, showing off his alarmingly hairy legs.

“Being outdoors does _not_ give you licence to treat school premises like a kindergarten cafeteria,” he barks. “What the hell is this mess?”

Eddie stares at him, one fat purple droplet dripping slowly from his hair and dribbling between his eyes. “You think I threw soda… at myself?”

“I think you’re being smart and I think I don’t like it,” Gittelman snaps. “Get to the bathroom and clean yourself up right now. And you can take that look off your face while you’re at it. And Uris!”

Teachers don’t use first names. They might remember they’re not military drill instructors if they do.

“You’ve got long legs and a wide stride, son. Come with me. I wanna talk to you about the track team.”

Stan throws Eddie a concerned look over his shoulder as Gittelman steers him away. Or maybe it’s just fear for himself, at the prospect of extra-curricular sports.

Eddie cleans his face in the sink of the boys’ bathroom, careful not to touch the grimy porcelain. His white t-shirt is ruined. He buttons his flannel over it to hide the worst of the stain.

Sometimes he wishes he could will craters to open up beneath him and swallow him whole. Still, at least Richie wasn’t there to see it happen. That would have been too mortifying to bear.

He looks at the graffiti again on his way out. Stan’s messy attempt at erasing it has dried now, and if Eddie looks at it side on the sunlight shooting through the small window above the toilet cistern makes the writing beneath still just about visible.

_dd e Kasbr k su ks co_

He wonders who wrote it, and why. If there’s something they might know.

Then again, sitting out gym class and standing under five foot eight is more than enough to give people the impression that a boy might prefer the company of other boys. There’s a new kid who’s just transferred this semester, Louie something-or-other, who’s already been dubbed queer for wearing a cuffed lilac sweater. Eddie wonders if Richie knows about that. He wonders if Richie’s seen the graffiti.

Eddie spots him at lunch, at his usual table, flanked by two girls. One of them is painting his nails.

How does that happen, Eddie wonders? Richie can sit there in full view of everyone while a girl slaps Sally Hanson on his bitten fingernails and no one bats an eyelid, but Eddie floats through school like a ghost – doesn’t talk to anyone, barely looks at anyone – and somehow _he’s_ the one memorialised on the bathroom wall. _He’s_ the Big Gulp target practice.

“You smell like grape,” Ben tells him, when Eddie sits down at their usual table. Eddie hurriedly explains what happened, and Ben is suitably sympathetic. “Been there, buddy. As long as it doesn’t get in your pants, it’s not too bad.”

He says this as though there’s a danger of this kind of thing becoming routine for Eddie, some type of ritual humiliation. Eddie grimaces at the thought.

“Eddie,” says Bill, snapping him out of his daze. “We were just talking about setting up a study group for the SATs. You in?”

“Already? They’re not for months.”

“Spring comes around sooner than you think,” Stan chips in. “If you ask me, we should’ve started a group last semester to give us more of a buffer. I wanna do well this year so I can free up next year for college applications.”

“Me too,” say Ben. “My mom and I went to Rhode Island over the break to look at the design school there. I’m pretty sure that’s where I wanna go.”

“I’m still working on convincing my parents that a study abroad program is a good idea,” says Bill.

“I still don’t understand why you need to go all the way to London to learn how to be a writer. They write in English, we write in English. What’s the difference?”

“Uh, how about all the hot English girls I can woo with my small-town American charm, Benjamin?”

“Dude, if you have to fly three thousand miles to get a girlfriend there’s something seriously wrong."

“What about you, Eddie?” Bill asks, still grinning at Ben’s jibe. “What’s your plan?”

“Oh, um.” Eddie peers at his lunch, grappling for a suitable answer. Plan, plan, what’s his plan..? “I was thinking about New York.”

“NYU? That’s a good school.”

“I want to go to New York too,” Stan says, smiling at him.

Eddie smiles back. Of course, the difference is that Stan wants to go to New York to train as an accountant and work for a big lucrative company and wear nice wool blend suits and, hell, probably live in a brownstone. Eddie just wants to get away from Derry, maybe work in one of the big museums on Fifth Avenue. He isn’t sure if he needs to go to college to do that. He isn’t sure if he wants to go to college.

He isn’t even sure if he _can_.

He thinks about it on his way home from school. Derry doesn’t even have a museum he can volunteer in, just a library and a little church where they sell local paintings on Saturdays.

Besides, he’d rather have a part-time job he could get paid for so he doesn’t have to rely on his mother’s sparse hand-outs anymore. He peers in the shop windows for Help Wanted signs as he walks down Center Street, but no one seems to be hiring.

He even checks the window of the Dunning Butcher Shop, but the truth is Eddie would rather go poor than have to handle raw meat. He shudders at the thought of all those microbes breeding in the warmth of the shop, and hurries past.

His friend Mike pops his head out the door just as Eddie passes by, and gives him a toothy smile. Mike’s always here, dropping off deliveries from the farm on his bike. He isn’t bothered by gross things at all. Eddie once watched in abject horror as Mike put his whole hand down the throat of one of his grandfather’s sheep to yank out a chunk of apple it was choking on.

“Hey, Eddie, man! Long time no see! Life as a normal kid keeping you busy, huh?”

Mike doesn’t say it with any bite. He never has a bite to his voice.

It’s what the two of them used to say, though: the public school kids were the “normal kids”. Eddie and Mike, well, they were just the token weirdos, a role easier to embrace when they could at least share it with each other.

They chat for a little while, their conversation still easy as ever.

“Is that a new bike?” Eddie suddenly asks, noticing the shiny BMX propped by the door of the butcher shop. It’s one of the silver ones with the big red wheels and curved red handles. It’s sort of weirdly sexy.

“Got it for Christmas,” Mike says proudly. “I _love_ it, man. My old Hutch is a tank compared to her. But hey, do you still need a bike? Why don’t you have my old one? We could take them out some time.”

Eddie’s own bike met an unhappy end last summer when he left it in a field near Mike’s house and it fell victim to a hungry bulldozer.

“Sure, that’d be great,” Eddie nods, quickly trying to figure out if he’s physically tall enough for the Hutch.

“How about tomorrow? Grandpa lets me finish at two on Fridays now.”

“Oh, uh, I can’t tomorrow,” says Eddie, not even having to think about it. “Fridays are always kind of busy for me.”

“Saturday, then?”

Eddie hesitates. Bill’s first study group is Saturday.

“I, um. I can’t do Saturday either.”

Mike’s face falls, just perceptibly, before he pins his smile back up again.

“Okay,” he nods. “Well, hey, I’m sure you’re busy a lot now so just come by any time you’re free, alright? And we’ll hang out. It’d be good to catch up with you, Normal Kid. It’s been too long.”

“Definitely. But Mike, dude, trust me. I’m not the normal kid at that school. Not even close.”

*

“Richie, which college do you want to go to?”

“Uh, I don’t know. Probably one of the ones in California.”

There’s a relief in knowing that Richie is just as vague as Eddie is about his future plans – but his aspiration to go cross-country is unexpected, and slightly alarming.

Eddie thinks about it. Richie going from Maine to California is almost the same distance as Bill going from Maine to London. It’s a thought so awful Eddie feels weak.

His voice comes out of his panic. “You really wanna go all that way?”

Richie shrugs, continuing with his elaborate doodle of Bugs Bunny smoking a joint. They’re lying on Eddie’s bedroom floor. His mother has resumed, with some reluctance, her Friday nights at Aunt Marie’s, and they can finally be alone again for a couple of hours.

“I just wanna be where the sun is,” Richie explains, dark eyes flitting to Eddie’s bedroom window where the rain is a steady, endless pitter-patter against the glass.

“There’s sun everywhere. That’s kind of the point of the sun,” says Eddie.

Richie looks sideways at him, the confusion on his face softening into something more like understanding.

“Come on, Eds. It’s not for, like, two years. Besides, I probably wouldn’t even get into one of those schools, they’re pretty good.”

“Uh, and you’re super smart.”

Richie scoffs, returning to his illustration. He draws dozy, heavy-lidded eyes onto Bugs Bunny.

“I don’t know where you get that idea from. I kind of suck spectacularly at school.”

Eddie rolls his eyes at the false modesty. “Right, and you’re totally not getting me through Algebra single-handedly.”

“Hm,” Richie says, without committing to a real response. Eddie senses Richie’s deliberately changing the subject when he says, uncharacteristically gently, “So, hey, I heard about what happened yesterday.”

Eddie winces, his pen hovering above his equations.

“Oh,” he says in a small voice. “Right. The Big Gulp.”

“Huh? What Big Gulp?”

Not that, then.

“Never mind,” Eddie says quickly.

Richie still stares at him, though. “Eddie, I’m talking about what was written in the bathroom. Didn’t you see it?”

“Yeah, I saw. It wasn’t me who scribbled it out, though. Stan did. I told him not to but he’d already done it.”

Richie quirks one dark eyebrow. “Why’d you tell him not to? _I’d_ have scribbled it out.”

“Well, maybe I just don’t care as much as you do.”

There it is. The bitter hairball Eddie’s been holding in ever since their conversation on The Kissing Bridge after Christmas.

“What?” Eddie says, when Richie doesn’t respond. “Do you think I should care?”

Richie sort of shakes his head and shrugs at the same time, but somehow neither gesture seems to say _no_.

The uneasy feeling that they might end up arguing tickles Eddie’s back. But he’s annoyed too, both by Richie’s hasty admission – _I’d have scribbled it out_ – and by the ever so slightly lofty look he’s fixing Eddie with.

Suddenly, part of Eddie almost _wants_ an argument.

He huffs instead, turning back to his homework. “Whatever.”

“I just think…” Richie begins.

Eddie stops writing and looks at him. “What?”

“Nothing. Doesn’t matter.”

“Richie, _what_?”

Richie sighs. “I just think if you _did_ care more, people might not give you such a hard time. You know, if you weren’t so obvious about being fine with what they say to you. That’s all.” He turns back to his own paper, no doubt so he doesn’t have to look at whatever facial expression his words have managed to elicit.

“So you think, what, every time someone gives me shit I should stomp my feet and yell and cry and then they’ll leave me alone? Hey frigging presto?”

“That’s obviously not what I mean.”

“Then explain it to me because I’m _obviously_ not getting it. What magical methods did _you_ use to get everyone to like you, Richie? Oh wait, I remember. You got your braces off and started smoking and suddenly all the girls wanted to paint your goddamned nails.”

Eddie doesn’t look at Richie when he snaps this. He doesn’t look at him when he mumbles an apology either.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

“It’s okay,” says Richie, then a shake of his head, then: “No, you’re right. I wasn’t thinking. Just ignore me.”

But Eddie can’t ignore it. The atmosphere’s a little awkward now, and Eddie hates this almost as much as the anger that preceded it. They finish his homework together, but without the usual enthusiasm. Not enthusiasm for the work, but for the finish, when they can sink their hands into one another’s hair and press their lips together hungrily, and occasionally, should time allow it, finish things off with a little _Final Fantasy_.

Tonight they just close their books and watch some TV, and then Richie picks up his backpack to go home.

“Are you mad at me?” he asks before he leaves, stopping at the door. The last of the sun has withered away, but he never seems to mind walking home from Eddie’s place in the dark – even when it’s raining.

“No. It’s just… I know what people say about me, Richie. You don’t have to remind me of it,” Eddie shrugs, arms folded across his chest. “In fact, you’re kind of the last person I want reminding me of it.”

“I wasn’t – I mean, that wasn’t what I meant to do.”

“Yeah, but you did. Look, I get it, okay? I’m not right for school. But that makes me feel bad enough without you pretending you don’t even know me when we’re there.”

“I don’t do that!” says Richie, but even he doesn’t sound convinced. “We just have different classes and different friends, that’s all. Hey, you don’t even _like_ my friends.”

“When have I ever said that?”

“You don’t exactly have to say it.”

“Well, I’m sure they don’t like me either. Maybe they think I’m too _obvious_ as well.”

“Eddie, believe it or not, not everybody is preoccupied with talking about you,” Richie snaps. There’s only the fraction of a pause before he sighs. “Look, I’m sorry. Okay?”

“It doesn’t matter. Whatever.”

Richie puts his hand on the handle of the front door, but doesn’t open it. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re weird.”

Eddie almost laughs. Maybe it’s meant to be an olive branch, but Eddie feels too sulky to take it.

“That wasn’t what you said at Christmas. You said we’re _both_ fucking weirdos. You’re just better at hiding it, right?”

Eddie doesn’t want to hurt him. But – and maybe it’s because of the soda incident, or maybe it’s because of the bathroom graffiti, or maybe it’s because Richie’s admitted he wants to run three thousand miles away from him, or maybe it’s all of those things combined plus everything else – when he sees the way Richie’s face falls, Eddie almost feels pleased.

And then he feels awful. He _is_ awful.

“Look, I’ll go before I say anything else shitty,” says Richie, opening the door, and although there’s a lightness to his voice like he’s halfway to making a joke, Eddie can tell they’re not exactly cool.

When Richie’s gone, Eddie wanders to the bathroom. He takes his evening medicine and vitamins out blindly and chucks them down his throat with tap water. When he closes the cabinet door he studies himself in the mirror.

As far as teenage boys go, he’s ordinary looking. A little on the skinny side perhaps, lots of collarbone and jutting elbow, but he doesn’t have acne, or greasy hair, or tragic orthodontic headgear. His teeth are neat and straight, marred only by a chipped canine. And yet he knows, despite this illusion of normalcy, he’s strange. His mother is strange, so it stands to reason that Eddie is strange too. And teenagers are permanently on the lookout for something strange to focus any unspent energy on.

Eddie rarely thinks about this when he’s with Richie, because Richie never makes him feel like he’s different – no, he does, but it’s the good kind of different.

Now it feels like Richie is telling him something else. That it’s fine for Eddie to be as strange as he wants on the inside, as long as no one knows about it on the outside. Like he needs to make sure his strangeness can’t be perceived externally. That’s the way Richie lives his own life: invisible and visible, all at the same time.

The next morning, the phone rings while Eddie’s having breakfast. His mother’s outside brandishing a fly swatter at a cat that keeps coming into their garden, so Eddie can answer the call before she does.

“Hello?”

“Oh good, it’s you. Sometimes your mom just straight-up hangs up on me.”

“Richie? What’s up?” says Eddie, moving away from the open back door. He glances through the glass: the cat is peering at his mother with bored contempt, swishing its tail disinterestedly while she shrieks and grunts.

“Aladdin’s are doing this Hammer Horror throwback thing tonight. I think it’s _The Plague of the Zombies_ , followed by _Frankenstein Must be Destroyed_. What do you say? I mean, the movies might suck but we could go and eat our bodyweight in ice cream? I’ll hold your hand during the scary parts? Hey, I’ll even let you wear my varsity jacket when I walk you home.”

His parents must be well out of earshot. Richie wouldn’t be talking this way otherwise.

“Sorry,” Eddie says, wrapping the phone cord tight around his finger. “I kind of already made plans with Bill and the others.”

“You did?”

“Is that so unbelievable?”

“No, no, of course not.” Richie pauses, and Eddie can almost hear him thinking. “Just kind of weird, isn’t it? We all used to hang out together.”

Eddie’s surprised. Somehow, this is the last thing he expected Richie to bring up. He clears his throat, shifting his weight from one foot to another.

“I mean, you could come…” he says, but he knows as soon as it comes out of his mouth that Richie will refuse, and even if he doesn’t, the others probably wouldn’t be pleased.

“Eddie, it’s cool.” This time there’s at least a smile to Richie’s voice. “I’ll see you tomorrow instead? Or Monday, if you don’t want to. Just, um. Maybe tell the others I said hi?”

Eddie feels his heart slide down to his feet. He wants to tell Richie he’s changed his mind. That he’ll spend all night in the sticky seats at Aladdin’s Theater if that’s what Richie wants.

But he can’t flake on the only people at school who are still nice to him. And he can’t let Richie think that all he has to do is snap his fingers to make Eddie change his plans. Even if Eddie sort of wants to.

“He says ‘hi’?” Stan says with clear distaste, as he, Bill, Ben and Eddie sit on the floor of Bill’s bedroom later that afternoon. They’ve been here an hour, but no one has opened a book yet. “Well, gee, that’s good of him.”

“I don’t think he was trying to get in your good books, I think he just… genuinely wanted to say hi,” says Eddie. “Why is it every time I talk about Richie, you get this look on your face like he poisoned your cat?”

“Eddie, don’t you know you’re in the company of a Boy Scout?” says Ben. “And Scout Law says a Scout is _always_ loyal. _And_ a friend to the animals, so between the mutiny and the cat poisoning, Richie is definitely in Stanley’s bad books.”

Stan rolls his eyes a little when the others chuckle.

“Okay, one: I’m not a Scout anymore. And two: I’m not some, like, crazy dictator who thinks anyone who stops being my friend is a treacherous mutineer. All I’m saying is, we all knew Richie before, and the person he is now is so far removed from that loser – and I use that word fondly, by the way – that I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s undergone a botched lobotomy at some point.”

“Come on, Stan,” says Bill, ever diplomatic. “You’re saying you haven’t changed since freshman year? You said it yourself – you’re no Boy Scout these days. I conquered my stutter by, like, ninety percent. And Eddie’s grown at least half an inch.”

“Hey, fuck you,” says Eddie, which makes Bill grin. “You know, I don’t think Richie’s actually changed as much as you all seem to think he has.”

“Really? Does he still think chocolate milk comes from brown cows?” says Stan, referring to a long-ago – and somewhat infamous – conversation from elementary school.

Eddie considers the kinds of things he could tell them, the things that would make them realise Richie isn’t a changeling. That a dork is still a dork even if you dress him up in Tommy Hilfiger.

He could tell them about Henri, the matted stuffed bunny taking up permanent residence beneath Richie’s pillow. Or about how Richie will deliberately tread on only one colour of tile on the rainbow floor at The Soda Hut. Or hop on the back of a shopping cart at the grocery store and make car engine noises. Or run just a little faster up the final few steps of his basement staircase when it’s dark.

It’s not exactly _Invasion of the Body Snatchers_. It’s just life. But Stan seems resentful; perhaps even jealous. When they were kids, he’d always bemoaned Richie’s devil-may-care attitude – and at the same time clearly longed to have some of that easy bravado for himself.

Despite Richie’s nerve and swagger, it was actually Bill who’d been the undisputed leader of their group. Even with his arduous stammer, it was Bill who decided when they were going to build a dam, or cycle to the Barrens, or pilfer the stabilisers from his little brother’s bike to make a go-kart. Richie was like the plucky sidekick, and Stan the methodical voice of reason. Eddie was never sure what his role was supposed to be. Group hypochondriac, perhaps? Token asthmatic?

By the time evening rolls around, they still haven’t opened a book. Bill disappears downstairs and returns with cans of Coke and a bottle of supermarket whiskey.

He doesn’t have to be stealthy, or wait for his parents to leave the house. Ever since Bill’s brother Georgie died when they were in middle school – that one awful, eerie Halloween – the grief-stricken Mr and Mrs Denbrough have more or less let Bill do whatever he wants. A more opportunistic kid might take advantage of this, but Bill’s too good, and too cut up about his brother’s death himself, to do much more than pinch a quart of cheap whiskey from the kitchen every once in a while.

“Maybe we should just start studying next week instead,” Bill suggests, toeing his biology text book out of the way with his socked foot as he leans to place the drinks in the middle of their circle. They each knock back several large mouthfuls of coke, so Bill can top the cans up with alcohol.

“We could always turn it into a drinking game,” say Ben, who’s probably never played a drinking game in his life. “We can start with the periodic table. Take a shot every time you get an element wrong.”

“Yeah, not for me, thanks. I’ll be catatonic,” says Eddie, lying on his back on the floor.

“I heard Jake Rotherstein’s planning to jam a bottle of blueberry vodka up his ass to sneak it into prom,” says Bill.

“The fact that I fully believe that rumour just highlights what a complete creature Rotherstein is,” says Stan.

“Are any of you going?” asks Eddie.

Prom isn’t for a few weeks yet but, like any small town, Derry has already jumped on the opportunity to hang obnoxious frilly banners and make the weird kids of the community feel even more inadequate than usual.

Ben just scoffs, while Stan says, “I don’t really see the point of junior prom.”

Only Bill hesitates before declaring, “I don’t have anyone to ask.”

Of their group, Bill is easily the best looking. But the only girl he’s ever really liked – at least, with any real patency – is Beverly Marsh, a sharp-witted redhead they’d palled around with in seventh grade. She moved to Portland at the end of the school year. Maybe Bill’s holding out on her coming back.

As if anyone would ever come back to Derry, once they’ve gotten away.

Eddie wonders if Richie is planning to go. It doesn’t seem like his kind of thing, but then, Richie is nothing if not unpredictable.

He stands up to stretch his legs. Bill’s bedroom is huge, and his desk is enormous too. It stretches the whole length of his window, with shelves underneath. His dad built it for him years ago, back when he still had hobbies.

A box slotted at the very bottom of one of the shelves catches Eddie’s eye as he wanders over, trying to get the circulation flowing in his legs again. A black and red box, with a draconic form looming in the centre.

“Maybe we could all hang out here prom night? It might be warm enough to camp out by then. Being a loser is a lot less lonely when you’ve got other losers to share the evening with. Pretty sure that’s a famous saying,” Bill says behind him, as Eddie pulls out the box.

He blows the dust from the top of the box, careful not to let it touch his hands.

“Forget camping. How about Dungeons & Dragons?” he suggests, showing it to the others.

Bill quickly grins. “Oh, so you _really_ want a trip down memory lane, huh?”

Even Stan’s face lights up. He stands up too, lifting the lid from the box, uncovering the glossy old dice and maps within.

When Eddie thinks of summer vacations from childhood, he thinks in large part of long bike rides and tall, sneeze-inducing sweet grass; sour candy and filthy river water and toes broken on soccer balls. But these were just the days. The nights were for gnomes and warlocks and druids and orcs and spells and arguments and hot cocoa and salty popcorn and painful, spluttering laughter, and parents sticking their heads round the door to hiss that it was bedtime three hours ago.

“I’ve never played,” says Ben, rolling a die between his plump fingers with interest. “Always looked super complicated.”

“We can show you,” says Eddie, with an enthusiasm that surprises even himself.

It’s like lifting the lid on Pandora’s Box. Memories begin to bubble up amongst them.

“Remember that time we fell out over that evil, corrupted necklace –”

“Uh yeah, because Stan sacrificed your character –”

“And became a _demigod_ –”

“Became the most powerful character in the whole game, and oh my God, your fucking _faces_ when you realised –”

“Or – I’ve got one, remember when we got caught at an Orc camp ‘cause our barbarian – I’m pretty sure it was you, Eddie –”

“No, it was Richie.”

“You sure?”

“I know the story you’re gonna tell and it was _definitely_ Richie – his barb was this huge, lumbering liability, and as soon as they heard us he –”

“He covered his face with his hands thinking they wouldn’t be able to see him, rolled a twenty and straight up vanished – ”

“ _Vanished_ – like a could-not-fucking-believe-it type of thing.”

The three of them cackle heartily at the memory. Ben is, understandably, mute, blond eyebrows raised in confusion.

“Say what you want about Richie. Dude was fun to play with,” says Bill, picking up one of the maps from the box, the hint of a fond smile still on his face. He runs his fingers over the glossy page, like he wants to play it now.

For a moment, Eddie wonders if it might be possible for things to go back to the way they were. Saturday nights in Bill’s bedroom or Richie’s basement, huddled around the sprawling card table. Stan in his ridiculous cape, the perfect Dungeon Master. Only instead of milk or cocoa they could have beer or whiskey. Play Richie’s music. Introduce Ben to the wonders of wizarding war.

No. It would never happen. Stan’s too preoccupied, Bill’s too disillusioned, Ben’s too out of the loop. And Richie? Would he come? Probably not.

Bill shoves the lid back on to the box and slides the game under his bed where it will be forgotten and gather more dust.

“Anyone wanna watch a movie?” he yawns, picking up his drink. “My dad got a bunch of tapes from a yard sale. I think we have _Total Recall_.”

*

**_Join us for a night you’ll never forget…_ **

**_… Under the sea!_ **

**_Derry High Junior Prom_ **

**_Get dressed, get glam, and party like a clam!_ **

So many opportunities for sea-based puns completely squandered, Eddie thinks, gazing at the poster on the hallway noticeboard.

They could have gone with something like _Come and make waves at this year’s junior prom!_ Or _Drink like a fish with our free punch! First come, first surfed!_ Or _No man is an island, so don’t get tide up with other plans – buy your tickets for prom now!_

God. He should be Class President.

“Tempted, huh, Eddie?” says a voice from behind him. The person has used his first name instead of his last, for once, but the niceties end there.

It’s just some guy in his grade – Gard Jagermeyer, a stupid name, used to knock around with Henry Bowers’ gang before Henry went legitimately nuts and killed his dad. He broke Richie’s glasses once in sixth grade.

“Obviously you’ll need a date, if you wanna go. Who’re you gonna ask?” Gard presses, when Eddie doesn’t say anything. “Let’s see. Brad Donovan? Robbie Greschner?”

Boys in their year. Football players. Eddie gets the joke now.

“No, _I_ know. Louie fuckin’ Stack. Two queers together!”

Louie stack's new kid. The one with the lilac sweater.

“Whatever.” Eddie tries to duck around him, but Gard’s arm flies out and his hand slams the wall by Eddie’s head with a horrible thud.

“Don’t walk away when I’m talking to you,” he says, his tone weirdly parental. “I thought we were having a pleasant conversation.”

“I barely even know you,” says Eddie, trying to keep his voice firm and not entirely succeeding.

“I bet you want to get to know me,” Gard says, leering.

His cronies loiter in the background, their excitement palpable, like braying hyenas giving off a scent. People flit in and out of the corridor behind them, but no one seems interested in intervening.

“So go on, Eddie. Why don’t you ask me? I know you’d just fucking love to.”

Gard pushes him, just slightly, in the chest, and this should be enough to stop Eddie saying what he says next. But Gard’s whole dialogue is so bizarrely pornographic that Eddie can’t help himself.

“You know, Gard, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were coming on to _me_.”

Bad decision. Definitely a bad decision. If Eddie were watching this in a movie, it’s what he’d will the persecuted character to say. And everyone would laugh. And the bully would slope off with his tail between his legs.

But this is real life, and in real life, nobody laughs. In real life, a horrible crease forms between Gard’s eyes, and his whole face twists. His eyes, usually muddy and dull with stupidity, take on a furious glint.

“The _fuck_ did you just say to me, you little queer?”

One meaty fist balls tightly in Eddie’s shirt; the other is drawn back like a catapult. Eddie closes his eyes, bracing himself for the impact. He’s been punched in the face once before – Gard was there, in fact, though it was Henry Bowers who delivered the blow. Eddie was eleven. He remembers how he swallowed so much blood he regurgitated it back up all over a nearby tree stump.

He feels for the comforting shape of his inhaler in his jeans pocket, but Gard must think he’s reaching for some sort of weapon – God knows what – because instead of throwing a punch he grabs Eddie’s wrist, crushing it.

“I wouldn’t get so close, Jager,” says one of his friends, lurking like a greasy shadow. “Kid’ll give you the friggin’ Plague.”

“Get the fuck away from him, Gard,” comes another voice, one Eddie instantly recognises as Richie’s.

“Oh, here we fuckin’ go.” Gard rolls his small, hard eyes as he starts to turn around. “There’s always one who has to spoil the fun. What’s it to you, Toz –”

Richie’s got him up against the wall before Gard can finish his sentence. Eddie scuttles three feet away to safety, eyes wide with shock.

Richie doesn’t fight. He doesn’t have it in him emotionally, let alone physically. His hand-eye coordination is useless, and his vision appalling.

But he isn’t fighting. He’s just holding Gard there, glowering, and although Gard doesn’t look the least bit scared, he at least seems surprised.

“I said leave him alone,” says Richie, reasonably patiently.

“And _I_ said –” Gard leans in. “The fuck is it to you?”

Richie’s friends are here, but they barely even look at Eddie, much less check to see if he’s okay. They wait with bated breath like an amphitheatre audience, praying for a fight.

Richie doesn’t deliver. His eyes scan Gard’s face; his lip curls just perceptibly. He was small in middle school, when Gard broke his glasses. Now he stands at least a foot above him.

“Look at the fucking state of you, man,” he sneers. “You need to get a grip.”

“Why don’t you just answer the fucking question?” Gard’s face lights up with an unusual expression: enlightenment. “Oh _I_ get it. Jeez, why didn’t you just _say_ , Kaspbrak? You’re taking _Richie_ as your date?”

A titter goes up around the crowd – from both groups of friends – and Richie tightens his grip on Gard’s t-shirt.

“Hey Richie, man, you’ve got nothing but respect from me. It’s real charitable of you.” Gard whips his head round to find Eddie, an ugly smirk on his face. “I don’t think anyone else’d take pity on such a fucking frea –”

Richie’s got a knee in Gard’s balls before he can finish. A gasp goes up around the crowd like wildfire; even Richie seems surprised.

Gard falls to the floor like a felled tree, just as a teacher bellows Richie’s name from the other end of the corridor. Richie ignores the summon, coming straight over to Eddie.

“Are you okay?” he asks. He doesn’t seem to notice that people – his _friends_ – are staring.

Eddie can’t speak, because there are too many things he wants to say, and his brain can’t settle on one. He wants to say Richie is stupid for making an enemy over nothing. He wants to say that he had it under control, that he isn’t fragile, that he doesn’t need defending, and he certainly doesn’t need _rescuing_. He wants to say well done, real good going, because now Richie will have detention for a week, and seeing each other will be impossible.

And then, more urgently than any of this, he wants to tell Richie that he might, quite possibly, be in love with him.

*

**January 2012**

**_I’ve managed to disappoint my mother again_** , Richie’s text reads. **_She doesn’t understand how I didn’t manhandle you over to her house the moment I knew you were in town_**.

 ** _I feel like you’re asking me something…_** Eddie replies.

**_Oh, I am. Dinner? Tonight? Say yes or run the risk of making an elderly lady cry?_ **

It’s weird to think of Richie’s mother as anything other than what she was when Eddie knew her. She was always so sparky and fresh, the type of mom who spent a lot of time on herself. Of course, she isn’t really _elderly_ even now. Eddie quickly works it out in his head – at the very most, she’ll be mid-fifties, Richie’s dad slightly older.

They had Richie young, and for some reason never had another kid. Some parents do this deliberately so that they can dote on their single child like a protégé, but Richie never went to private school or on flashy vacations. He never had violin lessons, or his own horse, or an expensive car when he turned sixteen. They just loved him a lot.

Eddie accepts the invitation, albeit with some trepidation. Richie’s parents always liked him, but what can he offer them when the inevitable questions arise? What will they have assumed about his life, and how will they feel when he details his paltry existence in stark comparison with their middle-class expectations? His first phase of manhood, lost to Derry and Rosie’s Diner and saving up tips in a Daffy Duck moneybox, still sleeping in a single bed in his mother’s house. No college, on account of his poor grades and his mother’s heart condition. No direction. Certainly no sex.

Then New York; two admittedly awe-inspiring years of sublime, neon yellow nightclubs and smoky golden parties and finding out what it felt like to be stoned; well-paid night shifts and new friends, sleeping with strangers in whitewashed studio apartments, sunlight checkering bare legs tangled in bedsheets – but all of it depleting when he stumbled, panicked over the sudden fear of HIV and dying alone, into a series of brief, anaemic relationships.

Then came the shuddering halt. He was with his last boyfriend six years, and while Eddie flitted from job to job, the search for something he might actually enjoy doing seemingly endless, every other aspect of the relationship was stagnant.

They never moved out of their apartment, or even painted the walls a shade besides humdrum magnolia. They never tried new restaurants or formed new hobbies. The grocery list held to the fridge rarely altered, or requested anything more exotic than five-spice. They never even went on a proper vacation. Theirs was a life of mind-numbing thrift.

And all of this would have been fine – the simple, common consequence of never having enough time or money in an expensive city – if Eddie had been in love with him. But he hadn’t been. Not for three quarters of the relationship, at least. And while he always wanted to experience new things, he invariably wanted to experience them alone.

That doesn’t mean he wants to be single forever. It just means that he has come to learn, with experience, that having no partner isn’t always the worst option.

Anyway. He won’t say any of this. If asked, he’ll say he’s not looking for a relationship at the moment, he’s carefully considering his next career move, and he’d like to take up a new hobby soon, because this is the kind of thing normal people say when they don’t want to make their hosts uncomfortable.

*

Lines are grooved into the brow of Maggie Tozier, and her hair, a sleek pixie cut, is now bright white. Her face is harder than Eddie remembers, her body thinner. But her smile still reaches her dark eyes – Richie’s eyes – and her hug, though brief, feels genuine.

“I sure wish we were reuniting under happier circumstances, Eddie. I’m so sorry about your mother.”

Is she? They used to hate each other. Maybe that’s what she means. Not ‘I’m sorry your mother passed away’, just ‘I’m sorry you had her as a mother’.

The house is just as tasteful as he remembers, although it’s been severely modernised. The pale satin wallpaper fashionable twenty years ago has been swapped for the smooth grey and white walls fashionable now. Black box frames line the hallway, containing pictures of family members and tranquil landscapes Eddie doesn’t recognise.

The kitchen has been remodelled, clearly at great expense. This is where Richie is, drinking bottled beer with his dad. They’re watching some old concert on a huge TV mounted above the breakfast bar.

Richie lights up when he sees him.

“There he is!” He encases Eddie in a brief, strangely macho one-armed hug. “You drinking?”

“Of course he is,” says Richie’s dad – though it seems more appropriate, as an adult, to think of him by his name. Wentworth. A silly name. “Do you want to try an exquisite cherry pepper stout, Eddie, or stick to Budweiser like Mr. Basic over here?”

“Don’t try the stout,” Richie warns him. “He made it himself.”

But social norms dictate that Eddie must accept the homebrew, and as soon as the first sip passes his lips he regrets it.

“I took up home-brewing when I retired last year,” Went says proudly. “It’s an expensive hobby but it keeps me quiet, so the wife’s happy.”

He’s retired, then. And for as long as Eddie knew her, Richie’s mother didn’t work. While a dentist’s retirement fund is probably pretty cushy, Eddie can’t help but wonder if Richie has paid for the sleek marble worktops and six-burner stove, or the hot tub embedded in the decking that can be peeked through the back doors.

Despite the flashy upgrades, the house is as welcoming as ever. It was always a _solid_ house, comfortably warm and well-maintained; the kind of building that never felt as though damp or pests could permeate it.

They order Chinese for dinner and eat in the living room. Perhaps the only way that Eddie’s mother was more stereotypically maternal than Richie’s was by the fact that she always cooked from scratch, every single day – pies and casseroles and heavy stews that could last all week – while Richie’s mother seemingly never cooked.

Oh, their fridge was always stuffed with food, but never the makings of an actual meal. Instead, they seemed to graze like Romans on fruit and nuts and interesting cheese and deli meat and little crackers and strange flavours of potato chips and popcorn which Eddie could never find in the grocery store. When they were kids and Richie was hungry, Eddie would frequently watch him scoop up a handful of dry cereal rather than resort to putting together a proper meal. Hot food was only ever ordered in. It always made Eddie feel ritzy, eating at the Toziers’ house. It was as if the very notion of committing to three mundane meals a day was a drag.

“So, Eddie,” says Maggie, pointing with the chopsticks she uses with ease. “Richie told us you’re living in New York. I’m surprised you two have never run into each other before now. Richie’s always filming there.”

“Ma, I’m hardly ever there,” Richie scoffs.

“You were on The Chew! And Rachael Ray!”

“Sorry,” says Richie, turning to Eddie. “I was there twice.”

“And you went to your cousin’s wedding on Staten Island.”

“Now that _is_ true, I’m surprised we didn’t run into Eddie there.”

She ignores this. “Still, I’m sure living in the city’s much better for your hay fever, Eddie. I know you used to suffer terribly with that, hon. Listen, did you try the shrimp in the chili sauce yet? Richie, pass him some of the shrimp in the chili sauce.”

It’s easier than Eddie thought it would be. He doesn’t know why he remembered Richie’s parents as particularly demanding conversationalists. They don’t ask why he doesn’t have a wedding ring. They don’t ask if he’s doing the job of his dreams. About as personal as it gets is Richie’s father asking if Eddie came to Derry by train or car, and for this Eddie is grateful.

They talk about the snow-swept woods of a Maine winter instead. They talk about the Bohemian waxwing Went saw in the garden last week. They talk about the different malts, hops and yeasts available for home brewing. And when Richie’s phone rings in the middle of their conversation and he excuses himself from the room, they’re talking about Maggie’s book club.

“Is that him _again_ , Rich?” she asks, peering over the back of the large sofa when Richie returns a few minutes later.

Eddie’s skin bristles at the familiar mention of a ‘him’ – a boyfriend? A secret husband? – but this turns out to be nobody more scandalous than Richie’s agent.

“Tell him to stop calling you at stupid o’clock. You’re on vacation,” says Maggie. She’s moved them all on to red wine now, and cradles an expensive-looking Bordeaux wine glass in her hand.

“Mom, it’s not stupid o’clock in California. He was letting me know they’ve changed their mind about me reading for that role again. Now they _do_ want me, but it might be this month instead of next.”

“Well, that’s good, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know.” Richie picks up the glass that’s been poured for him and sits back down next to his mother. “I mean, yes. I just wish they’d give me a time and date and stick to it. It’s putting me on edge, not knowing.”

“Richie’s been asked to do a film,” Maggie explains, pride glinting in her eyes.

“What – acting?” says Eddie.

“Voice acting,” Richie corrects. “It’s just a kids’ film, not a big role. The director passed clips from my show to some other people at the studio since he seemed to think my voice would be perfect for an anthropomorphic steam train with health anxiety. Not really sure what that says about my voice but I’m not gonna turn it down. It’s a small part but it’s still pretty exciting.”

He’s famous. As in, properly famous.

Eddie’s spent so long thinking of him as Richie, the seventeen-year-old boy who broke his heart, that he’s never really appraised him fully as Richie the radio show host, or Richie the TV presenter, or Richie the comic. Hell, at one point Richie was the face of some urbane, metrosexual hair product, and Eddie would still pass the billboards in the city and think little more than: _Huh. I’ve kissed those four-foot lips_.

He knows, of course, that Richie is all of these things, and that he’s done them well enough to amass a reasonably large fan base, and that while he is a divisive and occasionally controversial figure in the public eye, his ability to own his scandals ultimately only serves to make him more popular.

But it’s like seeing someone you knew from school pop up as a bit part in a TV show. You can see them right there on the screen, but you never get the sense that they’re actually famous, or that the screen time is anything other than fleeting. They’re just a kid who used to eat crayons in kindergarten, who’s somehow managed to stumble on to a TV set.

Richie hasn’t stumbled. He’s curated a career for himself. He’s deliberately elevating his body of work towards more lucrative, arguably more respectable mediums, and Eddie realises that this is what Richie has done and will do forever.

Eddie’s always thought jobs like Richie’s to be self-aggrandising, a little shallow. But he sees the smile on Richie’s face now, endearingly boyish and flecked with self-doubt at the prospect of a new venture, and the resentment Eddie’s harboured for so long like a poison begins to shift; an old stone rolled away to reveal a simpler, lighter, cleaner emotion. It’s pride, of course. Pride that was always smothered beneath everything else.

*

Richie was telling the truth. His bedroom hasn’t changed. He’s brought Eddie up here under the guise of showing him a twilight view into the woods from the circle window, but they both know that it’s so they can be alone.

There are three good-sized bedrooms on the second floor, but Richie always slept in the attic. As kids, they’d hang out the window on clear nights, pretending they could identify constellations. Richie would usually make them up. _The Big Boner_. That one always used to crack Bill up. Often, when Eddie slept over, he’d be woken by birds walking on the eaves, cooing gently. Sometimes Richie would sleep through it. Sometimes he’d raise a drowsy arm and bang on the ceiling.

“It’s like going back in time,” says Eddie, circling the room’s perimeter slowly. It’s all still here. The two-deck stereo on an apple crate. The stripy flatwoven rug, singed by an attempt at fireproof balloons for a science fair. The Ghostbusters poster hiding a crack in the wall (the result of a poorly-aimed slingshot), the ThunderCats poster hiding another (the result of a Nintendo controller thrown halfway across the room in frustration).

Twenty-three years fall away. It’s 1989. They’re drinking liquor for the first time in this very room, in the kind of liberal amounts not afforded by church or formal family parties. Stan is being sick out of the window – or rather, breathing in the dark fresh air in the aftermath of being sick. Richie and Bill are trying to substitute the lyrics to ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ for their own creations (“ _Gozer the Gozerian, Stan’s afraid of sex organs, he’s probably vegetarian, like Michael Jackson”_ etc.). Eddie is sitting on the rug, the one burnt by the fireproof balloons, giggling and unable to stop himself. The only respite he gets from his laughter is the occasional interruption of a hiccough. The alcohol is making him deliriously happy, but so are his friends. His funny, stupid, wonderful friends.

Eddie doesn’t realise his eyes are closed until he opens them. Signs of Richie as he is now immediately replace the memory: a pack of Marlboro Reds on the night stand, a suitcase on the floor with clothes spilling from it. Richie’s gazing out of the window, at the long back garden and the thick woods beyond, like he’s lost in the reverie of childhood too.

“Thanks for inviting me,” Eddie says to break the silence. “I’ve been so wrapped up in everything it wouldn’t have even crossed my mind to call on your parents if you hadn’t been here. I’m glad I got to see them, though.” He grins as a thought occurs to him: “You know, your dad hasn’t changed at _all_.”

“Tell me about it.” Richie turns to him. “They always liked you. I mean, even before we – even when you switched to home-schooling, Mom used to talk about you all the time.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Usually to make a point about how much she _didn’t_ like my other friends. I remember one time – I must have been like, what, fifteen? I got dropped at home in a police car at two a.m. or something. Nothing bad. Just normal, bored teenager stuff, loitering around a liquor store or whatever. My mom didn’t say anything at first, but the next morning she slammed a bowl of cereal in front of me and was like, ‘you know who _wouldn’t_ have let you get driven home in a cop car? _Eddie Kaspbrak_ wouldn’t have let you get driven home in a cop car’.”

“What did you say?”

“I was like, ‘yeah, Eddie is a fucking fast runner, Ma, we’d have lost those cops _easy_ ’,” Richie laughs. “She always had this idea that I’d more or less changed for the worse when your mom took you out of school after you had that accident. I don’t know. She was probably right.” Richie lifts the pack of cigarettes from the night stand, runs his fingers over the box but doesn’t take one out. “I visited you, you know. After your accident. I always wanted you to know that.”

Eddie waits for more.

“We all did. Even Beverly – remember her? She was so nice. She made cupcakes for you. They were kind of awful but the thought was there. When we arrived, though, your mom…”

Eddie nods, sitting down next to him. “I get it.”

“I think Bev being there made it worse, to be honest. Your mom already hated my guts, but bringing a girl in jean shorts along to her front door, _well_ …”

“You don’t have to make excuses for my mom, Rich. She wasn’t trying to protect me. I wasn’t even sick. My head had healed within about two weeks. She just wanted me indoors with her all the time.”

Richie nods. There’s a gap between them in which he places his hand, pressing it into the quilt, looking at that instead of at Eddie. His mouth twitches before he speaks again.

“There was another time.” He stops, shaking his head at his own clumsy delivery. “I mean, I came to visit you again. On my own, a couple of years later. It was just before I left for college. Literally, the week before I left. Everything was packed. My mom was throwing this party for me. I snuck out after a few hours when all my family were drunk, and I just walked and walked, and after a while I realised I was walking to your house.”

He smiles, then swallows. His eyes are still cast downwards, at the boyish gingham print of the bedding, like he doesn’t want to risk seeing Eddie’s expression.

“I remember I was rehearsing this whole speech in my head before I got there. I knew you weren’t going to college, so… I thought you could come with me. I don’t know what I was expecting. I mean, yeah, I was a little drunk. And clearly I’d listened to way too many Tracy Chapman songs. But I think if you’d said yes, I’d have just gone with it. Figured it out.”

“I don’t remember that,” Eddie says, voice faint as he tries to recall any instance after he graduated high school that someone other than his aunts or Jehovah’s Witness came knocking on their front door. “You never came.”

“I did. You were out when I got there. Working or whatever, I don’t know. When I thought about it the next day, I guess I was relieved. Would’ve made a pretty big fucking idiot of myself asking you to run away with me, huh?”

Eddie shakes his head. “Richie, we hadn’t spoken for, like, a _year_ at that point. We weren’t even friends. Let alone –”

“Yeah, I know.” Finally, Richie looks at him. Then he shrugs. “That doesn’t mean I didn’t think about you all the time. God, I was a sorry fucking loser back then, Eddie, you don’t even know.”

“Yeah, I’m sure.” Eddie’s aware there’s an edge to his voice but he can’t help it. It’s all well and good saying this now, but Eddie could have done with this confession back then a hell of a lot more. “Look, you should’ve said something.”

“What was I supposed to say?”

“I don’t know, _any_ of this would’ve been ideal. Take your pick!”

“I was a kid, Eddie. I was a scared, clueless _kid_.”

Eddie looks at him, incredulous. “And I wasn’t?”

Richie is quiet for a long time at this point. His fingers have stilled on the quilt. He barely even blinks as he stares at a spot on the rug; the black, burnt spot.

“I’m really sorry for what happened to – for what _I_ did to you, Eddie. I am. All I wanted to do was take it back but I couldn’t. I couldn’t do anything.”

“You could’ve told the truth about yourself. Instead of making me out to be the dopey little faggot with a crush on you.”

Richie flinches, either at the choice in word or at the thought of outing himself in high school Eddie isn’t sure.

“I couldn’t do it while I was still at home. My parents…”

Eddie raises his eyebrows. “What about them?”

“They wouldn’t… they weren’t…” Richie sighs; regroups. “If you want the truth, I didn’t accept myself – I mean, _really_ accept myself – until I dropped out of college. Until I saw gay people living normal lives in L.A. That’s when I told my parents. I phoned them from this shitty little booth outside a bar, and it was the worst conversation I’ve ever had. They didn’t speak to me for a year after that. When they _did_ start speaking to me again, it was like they expected something to have changed. And when it didn’t, well. The silent treatment came back.”

Eddie stares at him without speaking. He almost doesn’t believe him.

Richie’s parents are unquestionably decent people. They were always good to Eddie. Their house – this house – was always his favourite place. Safe. A sanctuary away from his own intolerable home.

And they’d loved Richie with everything, and with such _obviousness_ , to the point that Richie, as a teenager, was clearly embarrassed by it.

God, even Eddie’s mother had accepted Eddie’s stuttering confession about his sexuality. He was twenty, and they were peeling apples for a pie on Christmas Eve when he’d blurted it out at the kitchen table like vomit. She’d screwed her face up, like she was piecing it all together in her mind, and in the end the only real emotion she’d made obvious was relief that there would be no future girlfriend to replace her as the woman in Eddie’s life.

But Maggie? Wentworth? They brew craft beer, for Christ’s sake. They talk at great length about their many and varied garden bird feeders. They read interesting books and watch interesting television shows and host interesting parties. They’re wholesome, educated people. They’re not bigots. They can’t be.

And if what Richie is saying is true, then that means –

“Are you saying they never knew about us?” Eddie asks as the bizarre thought suddenly strikes him.

“Of course they didn’t.”

Eddie laughs a little, even though it isn’t remotely humorous. “You’re fucking with me, right?”

“I am really not fucking with you.”

“But we were so _obvious_. Weren’t we? I feel like we were. Christ, I used to fall asleep in your _bed_. I used to… I don’t know, walk around in your t-shirts.”

“They were just happy that you were here distracting me from my terrible, heroin-shooting, child-murdering friends. Eddie, the thought that I was in love with you would never have even crossed their minds. It just wasn’t on their radar.”

Eddie pauses as he takes this in.

“So they don’t know I’m – ?”

Richie shrugs. “Doubt it. I’m sorry, maybe I should’ve warned you, but I knew they wouldn’t ask. They’d look at your ring finger, decide you were single, and then carry on talking about themselves.”

“Fuck. _Fuck_. Richie, I had no idea.”

“I mean, it’s fine. They accept it. Sort of. Once I started working, they seemed to be able to deal with it a little better. Somehow it's easier for them to stomach me being gay if I'm an ‘advocate’ or an ‘inspiration’. If they can turn it into something glossy, something people can applaud on a talk show or write about in a magazine, then they can live with it. It doesn’t matter to me. I just wanted my parents back.”

“I just assumed… God, I didn’t know you’d dropped out either.” Eddie puts his head in his hands. It’s started to swim a little, because Richie has managed to upend the idealistic image Eddie’s held of him for the past twenty years and now it’s all just out there in this big, messy pile, like electrical cords that he can’t straighten out. “I’m so fucking selfish, I didn’t even ask.”

Richie huffs out a little laugh. “What would’ve you said? ‘Hey Rich, haven’t seen you in a couple decades – tell me, did you actually finish your degree and by the way, are your parents massive homophobes’?”

“What I mean is, I shouldn’t have assumed your life was peaches and cream just because of your job.”

“Oh, don’t worry. Mostly it is,” Richie grins. He does this. Deflects the emotional stuff as soon as he senses things are starting to get heavy. “Besides, it’s not the whole truth. I knew my parents would take it badly but, on a more basic level, I was also just a little pussy who was scared about what people would write about me in the boys’ bathrooms. And I’m sorry for that.”

“I forgive you,” says Eddie, surprised by how easily the words come to him. How good they feel. “It was a long time ago.”

“If I fucked anything up for you –”

“You didn’t,” Eddie interrupts, and that’s surprisingly easy to say too. “Really, you didn’t. I told myself you did, for a long time. It was easier than admitting the actual truth, which is that I never had a chance to begin with when it came to college and all of that stuff. I thought about applying a year or so after you and everyone else left, but my mom developed this heart condition and I stayed in Derry to take care of her. I don’t resent her for that. I just took it as a sign. Any college I could’ve gotten into would’ve been a waste of time anyway.”

He gets up and moves to the dresser, on which Richie has placed his wine glass, half-finished. Something has caught Eddie’s eye. A green square of paper, a hard crease down the middle, a scribble of a signature, mostly illegible, at the bottom. The flyer says _Throwing Muses, Civic Auditorium, Tuesday May 2 1988_ , but the scribble is from the hand of the singer of the Pixies. A certificate of authenticity taped neatly to the back says so.

Eddie reaches out to untack it from the dresser mirror, and as he does something falls from behind it. A strip of photos, torn in half. The kind that arcade photo booths vomit out at two bucks a pop.

Two photos gone, two remaining. Himself and Richie, both seventeen. In one, only Richie is looking at the camera, because Eddie is distracted by laughter. In the second one, they’re looking at each other.

It might not be obvious to the casual observer – to Richie’s parents, say – that the two boys in the pictures are more than friends, complicit in some secret pact. That the look they’re fixing each other with is filled with love – or the closest thing to love seventeen-year-olds are capable of. The uncertain but all-encompassing, exhilarating kind, like a scream at the top of a rollercoaster. The kind that fizzes up daydreams and can be felt like a pain in the gut.

Like a delayed reaction, Eddie recalls what Richie said only minutes ago. _The thought that I was in love with you would never have even crossed their minds_.

The photo strip is from Richie’s birthday. Spring 1993, when Derry was just starting to heat up in anticipation of a long and sticky summer. And even if Eddie has never felt real love since, it burst from his very body that day.

 _The thought that I was in love with you_.

 _I was in love with you_.

“I didn’t take those with me when I left home because I knew I’d lose them,” Richie says from behind him, answering the question before Eddie has to ask it. “And they kind of feel like they belong here anyway.”

There’s no way Richie means for this to sting, but it does a little. It’s as if he wanted to box Derry up, and everything that came with it. Store it away to gather dust, quite literally in the attic.

“It’s okay,” Eddie says. He can’t exactly say that it’s not. After all, Richie may have kept his mementoes of their relationship tacked to his dresser mirror, but Eddie literally tore his up.

“Do you think we should talk about the other night?” Richie says quietly. “I feel like we should.”

Eddie puts the flyer back on the dresser. “And say what?”

“You’re an awkward fucker sometimes, you know that? Okay, I’ll go first. I had a really good time. I don’t regret it. And the thought of leaving you in a few days is really getting me down.”

“Okay,” Eddie says slowly. “My turn? My name’s Eddie Kaspbrak, and I’m a –”

“Oh, fuck you, I’m baring my soul here,” Richie laughs. “You have a very un-American aversion to sentimentality, you know.”

“I always thought you did too, but being a celebrity’s clearly changed you. I know big outpourings of emotion kind of go with the territory.” It’s too difficult to keep up the jokey camaraderie much longer, and Eddie stops and sighs. “Richie, look, please don’t start this now.”

“What?”

“This… making things weird. It’s not going to do either of us any favours.”

“How am _I_ making things weird? You don’t think what’s happened is already weird enough?” Richie shrugs. “I’m just being honest with you. I still have feelings for you. You don’t have to say you feel the same way.”

“I know I don’t.”

“Alright, that’s fine.”

“I’m not saying I don’t feel the same way, I’m saying I know I don’t have to tell you that I do.”

“Could you just give me a straight answer?”

“Okay, here it is. I’m going home in a few days. And you’re going back to the other side of the country. And I’m glad we got to see each other again and I can have this new way of remembering you, but the truth is…” Eddie runs his thumb over the photo strip still in his hands. Over his own face, creased with laughter. “You don’t know anything about me. And I don’t really know anything about you.”

Richie pulls a cigarette, slightly flattened, out of its pack. This is what he does, Eddie’s come to notice, when he’s trying to think of what to say.

“I know you’re upset that I didn’t take that Black Francis flyer off the dresser,” he finally mumbles, spinning the cigarette between his fingers. “Or the photos. I know you think I left them because I didn’t care. I know you hate your job, even though you won’t tell me what it is. I know you have a lot more in you than just going back to your apartment near that bakery and picking up where you left off, even if it doesn’t include me. And I know there’s a lot more to you than just that, Eddie. There’s twenty whole years I missed out on. My fault. But I didn’t want to miss the chance to tell you that I want to learn about all of it. That is, if you ever want to tell me about all of it.”

What Eddie would have given to hear this when he was eighteen. Richie on his doorstep, tipsy and red-cheeked, about to leave for college. Would Eddie have accepted the ludicrous invitation? Or would it have felt better to stew in resentment, slam the door in his face? He knows that, deep down, even back then, after everything that happened, he wanted to be wanted by Richie more than anything else in the world. 

Eddie's head feels bruised with information. He sits back down on the bed, scrubbing two hands through his hair to try and soothe it.

“This has been a crazy fucking couple of weeks,” he admits. “I’m not sure I can have this conversation right now, on top of everything else.”

This is the truth – his head really is swimming – but beneath this, a fear tugs at him. Richie has always been flighty, prone to whimsy and embellishment and jokes. It would be easy for him to mistake a brief infatuation as something more profound, like someone who makes the mistake of proposing to the figure of their holiday romance the night before the vacation ends, because they’ve mistaken good wine and hot sun and novel sex for love.

Eddie can’t allow himself to get trapped within that kind of transient adoration, no matter how much his mind – and his body – wants him to. No matter how good Richie is at fixing him with a gaze that says he really means it.

He doesn’t know why, but on a whim he sits up and takes Richie’s hand. Richie doesn’t respond for a moment, clearly surprised, but then his fingers lock around Eddie’s tight, his palm comfortingly warm and dry. He seems to understand that the gesture is a singular one, not an invitation to something more. They sit quietly, the room darkening around them as Derry’s light fades from the circle window. When Eddie finally unclasps his hand, Richie lets him go easily.

“I should go,” he says, standing up slowly.

Richie nods. He waits a few long moments before speaking.

“I’ll see you again, though? Before either of us leave?”

“Yeah, Rich, of course.”

Eddie means it. When he descends the stairs to say goodbye to Maggie and Wentworth, he tells them they must keep in touch. He doesn’t mean that.

He can barely look at them. It’s like the lenticular portraits he used to get a kick out of in the Derry Fair Funhouse as a kid. When you looked at the pictures head-on, the subjects would appear pleasant – but when you tilted your head, they took on evil, toothy grins and white, sunken eyes. He doesn’t want to think about Richie feeling alone and outcast for two years of his young life. Stranded in another state, on another coastline, without his parents to look after him. Eddie knows what it’s like to be displaced. To have no one to call. To worry that if you fell and hit your head, no one would notice for days.

He briefly fantasises about turning on the doorstep as they see him off and telling them the whole truth about him and Richie. For Richie’s sake, he doesn’t.

When he gets back to his mother’s house it’s pitch black, the moon already hanging hazily in the sky. Eddie fixes himself some of the awful supermarket whiskey in the kitchen, then makes his way to his bedroom where he flicks on the lamp.

He pulls open the drawer of the night stand, pushing aside papers and old money, an ancient inhaler, spare condoms Richie left behind the other night. He feels the slippery tape of the cassette before the plastic of its casing and pulls it out carefully, along with a blunt pencil which he uses to painstakingly wind the tape back into place.

He turns it over in his hands, taking a sip of his drink. _Eddie's Mix 2.0_. Something has spilled on the label a long time ago, so the black letters have dribbled a little.

The first one – _Eddie’s Mix_ – will be buried elsewhere in the room. Eddie doesn't know where the Walkman is either, but he doesn't feel ready to listen to the tape, if it even still works at all.

He isn't ready to transport himself back to seventeen with those chunky, adolescent drums, those basslines so heavy that they used to thrum in his chest as if sucking at his ribs, because his mind is lingering on the same image, stubborn in its refusal to be dismissed. Himself, climbing into Richie's lap; of Richie's mouth on his own. He knows listening to the tape won't exorcise the image. It would only make it ache all the more. It’d be too much and not enough, all at once.

He finishes his whiskey. Maybe he’s being stupid in his one-man quest for self-denial, in his unwillingness to grant himself joy purely because he’s afraid of it being brief. Does it matter if what he and Richie do here is temporary? Isn't he allowed to enjoy himself?

He considers, very seriously, texting or calling Richie, bringing him back to the house, pushing him up against the wall in the dark – but after Eddie’s hasty exit earlier the thought is too humiliating, like a child sulkily dragging a toy back to its bedroom after previously tossing it away in an embarrassing tantrum.

He decides instead that if Richie contacts him first, asks to meet up, Eddie will say yes. Never mind _just say no_ ; too much of Eddie's life has been missed by his sheer inability to just say _yes_.

So he lies back and closes his eyes, silence encasing him like a thick blanket. He waits. He has the tape in one hand, his phone in the other, both hands crossed at his navel. The comfortable position reminds him - only briefly, before he slips away into sleep, the phone never buzzing - of the way some ancient civilisations used to inter their dead, burying them with the items that had mattered to them in life.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so this fic is probably the most fun I've had writing a fic in like... forever. incidentally, compared with other stuff i've written, it's also not doing 'well' at all, but i really don't mind because the readers i do have and the comments you have all left have been so thoughtful and kind that it means more to me to have such a lovely group of readers than getting a shit ton of hits and kudos, so lemme just say thank you again for that. life is like... literal shit this year but this little story and little community cheers me up a lot, so thank you! i know this probably seems random to say but it's because this particular chapter was one of the ones i enjoyed writing the most so i'm really looking forward to posting it for ya'll.
> 
> that said, my friend and I are in the process of planning a new fic that's gonna be like a more modern dark comedy style (still reddie, with some stanlon thrown in for good measure) so what kinds of things would you potentially like to see in that?
> 
> no real warnings for this chapter except for further and more intense exploration of munchausen's, and a bit of underage drinking

**February 1993**

And there, on the back of the cubicle door, written in red Sharpie this time as though the crime it speaks of is somehow even more grievous than Eddie’s, is the Derry High boys’ bathroom’s official proclamation: Richie Tozier, also, sucks cock.

So it comes to this: Eddie’s walking into the school cafeteria the day after the graffiti appears, and Richie is loitering by the door with three of his friends – all male – and Eddie hears Richie say, “Everyone knows Carla Causey’s easy as fuck. I mean, it’s a stripper’s name to begin with. I can’t decide if the guy who’s taking her to prom is super fucking lucky or a huge fucking tool,” and then he laughs. He has quite a ridiculous laugh really; Woody Woodpecker, if Woody’s laughter invariably ended with a smoker’s gasp.

Eddie’s back goes cold with a shudder. He catches Richie’s eye as he passes him, frowns pointedly, and Richie at least has the small amount of decency required to let his grin falter.

Richie tries to explain himself in detention. They’ve all been handed week-long sentences – him, Gard, Eddie, even though all Eddie did was stand there while Gard’s spittle breezed across his face – but Gard hasn’t shown up for three afternoons, and now it’s Thursday and it doesn’t seem likely this is going to change. Gittelman, who broke the fight up, has decided a suitable punishment is a week cleaning out the equipment shed on the far field, in preparation for summer sports. Richie and Eddie’s shed, with its spiders and secret corners. Today he’s handed them plastic gloves and step ladders and instructed them to clear the mulch of autumn leaves, dead insects and old rain out of the shed’s plastic guttering.

“It’s just the way guys talk,” is Richie’s feeble attempt at an explanation for his behaviour in the cafeteria as they stand precariously, side by side on their rickety old ladders.

“No, it isn’t. I don’t talk like that,” says Eddie.

“Not guys like you.”

“Right. Just guys like you.”

This seems to stump Richie slightly.

“What’s Carla Causey ever done to you?” Eddie asks, his hand paused around a fistful of decaying matter. His breathing is a little uneven. The step ladder isn’t quite tall enough for him, making the job even harder.

“What? Nothing.”

“Well, then. You’re an asshole.”

With this, Eddie resumes his work. In his peripheral vision, he can see Richie is still looking at him with an expression on his face like a kicked dog.

“The thing is,” Richie says after a few moments, still not helping Eddie with the guttering, “I may have told a few people about us hanging out on Fridays, and I think it’s been misconstrued, and that plus the thing in the bathroom, I just…”

The hopefulness in his voice suggests Richie is expecting some kudos for his admission that he’s deigned to tell people about the two of them hanging out together. Eddie won’t give him any such satisfaction.

“That’s a funny word to use,” he says, grunting as he unearths a particularly stubborn tennis ball from the eaves.

“What is?”

“‘Misconstrued’. Really, if people think there’s something going on between you and me, they haven’t misconstrued anything.”

Richie rolls his eyes in a slightly impatient way that Eddie finds annoying.

“What I mean is, they’ve misconstrued the version of events _I’ve_ told them,” he says. “Which is that we just hang out and do homework.”

“Or they’ve figured out you’re lying.”

“No. I haven’t lied about anything. Just made certain omissions.”

“You know what you haven’t done?” says Eddie. “Shifted any of this fucking mulch.”

Richie blinks at him, then looks at the sludge in the gutters, as if only just noticing it’s there. From his end he sinks his gloved hands into it, and in one motion manages to push at least two feet of the stuff out and on to the ground below, where it lands with a horrible wet thunk.

“Happy?” he says churlishly.

Eddie stares back at him, then suddenly rips his own stupid gloves off. “You know what? I shouldn’t even be here, putting my hands in this goddamned plague pit. I’m not the one who kneed Jagermeyer in the fucking balls.”

“Oh, you’re welcome, by the way.”

“Whatever, man, I didn’t ask you to get involved.”

Richie shakes his head. “I can’t win with you, can I? You’re mad that I did something, you’d have been just as mad if I hadn’t.”

“No, Richie, you know what I’m mad about? I’m mad that every time I walk past you and your friends, you seem to either be making fun of someone or saying shitty things about girls. I’m mad that you act like one person with me and a completely different person with everybody else. And I’m mad that Gittelman gave me a fucking week’s worth of detention for something that _I didn’t do_.”

He slaps the gloves down on the rotten roof of the shed and jumps off the step ladder, stumbling slightly so that his rant loses some of its gravitas. Nonetheless, Richie’s mouth hangs open dumbly.

“Where are you going?” he calls after Eddie.

“Home. Fuck this. It’s filthy. We’ll be lucky if we don’t get fungal nail infections.”

“You can’t leave me to do it by myself!”

But Eddie doesn’t respond to this, and the last thing he hears as he stomps off the sports field is a very faint, very bewildered, “ _What the fuck?_ ”

Good. Let him simmer. Richie shouldn’t always have to get his own way.

Eddie wasn’t lying. He _is_ angry. It’s an unusual emotion for him, one that takes a little getting used to before he really gets into the flow of it. Oh, he knows irritation, disgust, frustration, impatience, disappointment, all of these things well. But they usually tire him out long before anger has any real chance to ignite its fiery self.

It’s just that all week he’s had to _listen_. To Richie and Richie’s Neanderthal friends with their inane remarks; mumbled commentaries and stifled laughter whenever girls in pretty skirts – or sometimes just girls in plain old jeans – walk by. Richie’s baffling response to a bit of bathroom graffiti in all its ridiculous, testosteronic glory. He’s always been a little immature – when he was a kid, you couldn’t write a sentence about Richie without using that word – but Eddie’s never known him to make it quite so _personal._

And, of course, there’s something else Eddie is angry about, which is that seeing the way Richie didn’t even stutter before crowding Jagermeyer up against the wall the other day and rocketing his knee up into the bully’s crotch made Eddie want to grab Richie and cut straight to the V-J Day Kiss, right there in front of everyone. Made him want to sing terrible, slushy songs from the rooftops. Made his heart soar and tilt like a carnival swing ride.

Oh, it’s just like Eddie to realise he’s in love with someone the same week he learns that that someone is very capable of being an asshole. He shouldn’t be surprised. As stated, disappointment is an emotion he now greets like a familiar old friend.

When he gets home, his mother’s sitting at the kitchen table with nothing other than a glass of dissolvable aspirin in front of her. Unusually, she hasn’t started cooking dinner yet.

“Hey,” he says, sliding his backpack off his shoulder and placing it by the door as he comes into the kitchen.

“Hi, sweetie. How was your little study group session at Stan’s house?” she asks, referring to the lazy lie Eddie’s been using to conceal the week-long detention from her.

“Fine.” He opens the fridge to take out a carton of orange juice.

She smiles a little vacantly and nods. Then her expression suddenly changes. “I’m sorry, did I say Stan’s house? I meant Mr Gittelman’s detention.”

Eddie freezes, his hand going still in the fridge where it’s holding the carton. He removes it slowly.

“Um...” He waits for a moment. “What?”

Genius.

“Oh, you don’t know? Well, that’s not really a surprise. I was starting to think that hanging around the likes of Richie Tozier and those of a similar ilk was starting to rot your brain. Maybe it’s gotten so bad you didn’t even realise that the whole point of a detention slip is for you to get it signed by me so that I know when you’re in trouble. It’s a very basic concept, sweetie.”

She says ‘sweetie’ when she’s mad more often than when she isn’t. It’s the same way Jack Nicholson calls his wife ‘darling’ when he’s trying to kill her in _The Shining_.

Eddie puts the orange juice back and closes the fridge.

“I’m sorry. I just didn’t want you to worry,” he says.

“Well, I _did_ worry.” Her voice is still unnervingly soft, even when she says, “I worried when that stony-faced bitch receptionist at your school called me and asked why I hadn’t bothered to return Eddie’s detention slip. I said, that’s ridiculous, Eddie doesn’t even _have_ detention. She said, oh yes he does, Mrs Kaspbrak. He has it every day after school for a week. He’s had it three times already.”

“Mom…”

“And I thought, well, that’s okay. No need to panic. Maybe he’s behind in his classes. I’d have something to say to the school administrator if that were the reason. I’d never let anyone punish my son for being a little slower than the other kids, because you’ve been through _such_ a lot. Imagine my surprise, then, when I found out it wasn’t for grades or homework. It was for fighting.”

“I wasn’t actually –”

“ _Don’t_ interrupt me!” she growls, standing up a little out of her chair so that Eddie, on instinct, steps backwards, bumping into the edge of the sink. She lowers herself back into her chair, tossing her tightly curled hair over her shoulder to compose herself. The gentle voice resumes. “And who else was involved, I asked? Well, she said. Gard Jagermeyer, that lumbering oaf whose father’s in prison for murder. And, the star of the show, perfect Ms. Maggie Tozier’s golden boy, _Richie_.”

Eddie says nothing. He drops his gaze to his feet, hating her soft voice, that faint smile on her face like a big, matronly nurse who’s gotten high off her own morphine.

“So when else have you lied to me, Eddie? Those weekend study sessions with friends? What’s that a cover-up for, hm? Shoplifting? Acid trips?”

Eddie tries very hard not to laugh at this, but he can’t help the tiny snort of derision that escapes treacherously from the back of his throat. His mother is incensed.

“This is what happens when I let you think you’re grown up,” she snaps, her voice suddenly transformed now to a low hiss. “I can’t believe you can lie to me so _easily_. Of all the horrible things you’ve ever done to me… my God, what would your father say?”

He’d probably say that she makes it impossible for Eddie to want to tell her anything. In Eddie’s mind, his dad always sides with him. Eddie has no idea if this would really be the case if his dad were still around, but it’s comforting to think of him watching down on their house, always fighting Eddie’s corner.

He’s ordered to his room without dinner – truly a child’s punishment – and without the phone or TV to distract him, he catches up on homework. He does his algebra homework, and then his Biology homework. It’s not too painful. With Richie and Stan’s respective help, he’s actually starting to get a grip on both subjects.

His mom comes in after a couple of hours with a grilled cheese sandwich and a glass of milk. Eddie absolutely loves the way she makes grilled cheese sandwiches, with a little sprinkle of brown sugar and lime juice. She doesn’t do them very often because she says too much cheese gives people Alzheimer’s and prostate cancer, so it must be intended as a peace offering.

She puts them on the night stand. Then, without asking, she picks up his school bag and rummages inside of it until she pulls out the crumpled detention slip. Gittelman has written: _Eddie was involved in a violent altercation which resulted in damage to another student’s groinal area_.

This is why he teaches Gym, and not something that requires books.

“Mom,” Eddie croaks, “I really wasn’t fighting –”

She holds up a hand to shush him, takes one of his pens and signs the slip without adding any parental comments. Then she folds it neatly and puts it back in his bag.

“Make sure that sour-faced hussy on reception gets it. I didn’t like the way she spoke to me on the phone.”

Then she gets up to leave, but before she does she pauses at the door, looking at him with her head tilted to one side.

“Make sure you eat all of that,” she says, nodding to the plate on the night stand. “I don’t know how it’s possible, but I think recently you’ve lost even more weight.”

Then she goes out of the room, purposely leaving the door slightly ajar.

*

**March 1993**

Richie is going to the dance. It shouldn’t hurt, but it does.

He is not, he assures Eddie, taking a date. Rather, it’s one of those big cacophonous group affairs, where the boys do stupid Herculean poses for photos together, and the girls all arrive linked together like Roman infantry, with hip flasks strapped to their thighs beneath their dresses, and if people from either group end up drifting towards one another during a Prince song and ultimately hooking up, so be it. Promposals and couples are _so_ last decade – apparently.

Things with Richie haven’t exactly been peachy since their argument at the sports shed, so Eddie can’t pretend he’s surprised by the prom revelation. He’s only been to Richie’s house twice since that detention, and one time was just to drop off one of Richie’s hoodies that Eddie had borrowed to walk home in one night. He didn’t want to give it back. He wanted to keep it wrapped around his pillow so he could sleep next to Richie’s warm agarwood and smoke smell every night, but he kept seeing Richie walking around the frosty school grounds in just a flannel shirt, so Eddie felt compelled to return it.

Richie, holding the hoodie to his chest like something precious, had asked him to come in. Eddie had to refuse; bound – genuinely – by a new curfew set by his mother.

Richie’s face had visibly fallen when Eddie told him he couldn’t stay and hang out. His nod had been resigned, the giddiness normally alight in his eyes snuffed out.

Eddie’s asked himself the same question nearly every day since: does this mean they’re breaking up? Is this what breaking up is actually like? Soap operas and movies always make a split in a relationship seem like this sudden, catastrophic thing where lots of plates get broken and terrible things get said, and the catalysts behind it are always momentous shocks like a new job in a completely different part of the world, or a sudden revelation of infidelity.

This isn’t like that. This is slow and meandering, creeping up on them from some hazy point of origin. Was it the sports shed argument that kicked it all off? The semi-quarrel at Eddie’s house, when Richie told him to be less _obvious_? Maybe even further back than that; maybe the strained conversation on the Kissing Bridge was the point Richie realised he didn’t want to be with Eddie anymore. Maybe he regretted the sight of their initials combined on the bridge as soon as he’d carved them into existence.

If this is breaking up – a slowly growing tumour rather than a sudden gunshot – Eddie never wants to do it again. This means one of two things: he can only be with one person for the rest of his life, or he can never be with anyone again. Both startling notions for a seventeen-year-old to have to digest.

“I have bad news, guys,” Ben says solemnly, one lunchtime the week before the dance. “On Friday night, we’re driving down to Rockland to visit my grandmother. We’re staying for the weekend. She lives on a boat.”

“What’s the terrible part? The fact you’re going to see her, or the fact she’s a sea nomad?” asks Stan.

“Neither. Well, the boat’s a little cold and I usually have to sleep in a hammock, but what I meant was, I’m gonna have to miss our little Fuck-Prom get-together on Friday night.”

Stan says, “Shit. I completely forgot we planned that. I can’t come either, it’s my cousin’s Bar Mitzvah this weekend. Promised I’d spend Friday helping my dad and uncle set up. It’s, uh, _Back to the Future_ themed.” He must sense that this is something he ought to have mentioned already, because he adds lightly, “Hey, it’s not so bad! Two-player Dungeons & Dragons is a unique, intimate experience.”

Bill’s response is to stuff a too-big forkful of macaroni into his mouth.

“Bill?” Eddie says cautiously.

Bill mumbles something which the rest of them make several attempts at deciphering (at first, Ben insists Bill is trying to say he has bladder stones), but which finally reveals itself to be, “ _I’ve kind of asked Marcia Fadden to come to the dance with me_.”

“Oh great,” says Eddie, stabbing at his lunch with his fork. “Well hey, gang, I got a call from John frigging Candy asking me to road trip to Chicago with him this weekend, so I guess I’ll be a little tied up too.”

“Sorry, Eddie,” says Bill.

 _No, you’re not_ , Eddie thinks. _You’ve dodged an evening playing the nerdiest game in the world with the nerdiest kids in school so you can slow dance to Boyz II Men with Marcia Fadden. Who, by the way, once ate chewed gum off the bottom of a desk for four bucks, lest we forget_.

When he thinks about it, though, part of Eddie is weirdly relieved that he won’t be spending prom night with anyone. It’s much more cathartic to be miserable by oneself. He can wear his pyjamas and listen to gloopy sad songs and eat as much junk food as he wants without anybody there to quirk a concerned brow. Even his mom will be at Aunt Marie’s.

But of course, come Friday evening she’s having second thoughts.

“Are you sure you’ll be alright on your own?”

She’s not saying it because of the dance. She doesn’t even know that’s happening tonight. She’s saying it because, since their blow-up about the detention slip, Eddie has, with karmic need, been making an effort to be nice to her. Helping with dinner, pulling weeds in the garden after school, tiptoeing around her moods. Hell, once or twice he’s actually emerged from his bedroom long enough to play Battleships with her, which they’re both categorically awful at. He loves his mother, but sometimes he doesn’t like her even a tiny bit. That doesn’t mean she isn’t right, though; he shouldn’t have lied to her. Lying is a shitty thing for a kid to do to their mom – even a mom like his.

“I’ll be fine,” he says. He’s already in his pyjamas, and thinking very seriously about the cherry-pecan ice cream in the freezer. He’s decided he’ll probably just eat all of it, and then buy more to replace it tomorrow before she notices.

“There’s more casserole in the fridge if you get hungry.”

“Thanks,” he says, still thinking about the ice cream.

“I won’t be back late.”

“Take as long as you need. You deserve it!”

His friends would rip him to shreds if they heard him say that – even Ben – but it does the trick. As she bustles out of the house with her cosmetics bag full of hair rollers, there’s a pleased little smile on her face.

He waits five minutes in case she comes back, then heads to the freezer. He mixes one part chocolate ice cream with two parts cherry-pecan, then spots his mother’s brandy on the shelf by the fridge and remembers how sometimes she drizzles it over spiced fruitcake at Christmas. He gets it down and hefts some of that into the bowl too. It tastes pretty good. And she did tell him he needs to put on weight.

He takes himself off to the front room, puts his feet on the coral pouffe, and watches _Amadeus_. He got the VHS tape for Christmas. It’s one of his favourites, even though most of it is made up. Normally he minds that type of thing, but he can overlook it with _Amadeus_ because of the wonderful costumes and stupendous wigs and Tom Hulce’s dopey smile and this lovely pink-gold haze that seems to cover the whole movie like a gauze.

Eddie likes a lot of different historical eras for a lot of different reasons, but if he had to pick one to be swallowed up by a time machine and launched into, he’d give eighteenth century Vienna some serious consideration. Not so much for the plague and invasions and sieges, which were kind of a bummer, but more because he likes to picture himself living in some tall, impressive, sun-bright apartment, its exterior painted bright white and lined with golden stucco. It would be surrounded by real Austrian bakeries, and he’d be woken up every morning by the smell of bread baking. He’d have to have a decent job, because the people in _Amadeus_ are always going to dinners and concerts and operas which can’t have been cheap. Eddie doesn’t know much about classical music, but he’d probably like it if he lived back then. What would it have been called before it was considered classical? Probably just music. If you wanted to make a mixtape for someone, you’d have to compile all the sheet music you liked in a big folder, give it to the person you had a crush on and say, “I made this for you. Every time you want to think of me, just play all of this on your harpsichord in this specific order.”

He wishes Richie were here so he could tell him that joke. It’s not very funny, but Richie would laugh as though it is.

At some point during the movie – perhaps because of the brandy, which he was pretty liberal with – Eddie dozes off. When he wakes up, the video is on auto-rewind, he’s got drool on his chin, and someone is at the door.

Eddie stumbles to answer it in a slight daze, wondering why his mother is knocking when she has her keys, and when he opens the door he sees this is because it’s not his mother, it’s Richie, there on the doorstep as if summoned by Eddie’s desire to tell him that stupid joke.

Richie’s face flits into a grin. “Hey, handsome. Heard you were home alone.”

Eddie is a lot of things right now, but handsome is not one of them. He’s in flannel pyjama bottoms, an old too-big university hoodie of his dad’s, Goofy socks, and his hair is sticking up at every possible angle. There is also, potentially, still drool on his chin, which he quickly rubs at with the back of his hand.

The effect of his appearance is made all the more shameful by the fact that Richie is standing here in his suit; snug jacket with the sleeves tugged to his elbows, which are patched with black velvet, expensive bright blue shoes to match the cobalt bowtie hanging loose from his neck, hair artfully mussed. He looks good. Awfully good. Some of Eddie’s drool threatens a second appearance.

“What are you doing here?” he manages.

Richie speaks straight away, like he’s got it rehearsed: “Prom sucks. It’s just another way schools try to make everyone feel inadequate, whether they go or not. And I feel like I’ve disappointed every musical hero I have by going, as well as myself. Plus it’s supposed to be about being with the person you have a crush on, and you’re the only person I have a crush on, Eddie Kaspbrak. A huge, disgusting, total eclipse crush. And also…” He glances down at himself. “My outfit is too goddamned good to not let you see it.”

Then he does a little spin, right there on the porch.

Eddie’s whole body feels like he’s on that carnival swing ride again, only now it’s going at double – no, triple – speed. And all he can manage is a stupid, croaky, “Oh!”

“So can I come in?”

Richie takes off his shoes and jacket and tie when he’s inside, but he still manages to make a plain white shirt and black pants look wonderful.

“What’s wrong? You look really worried,” he says, his expression faltering, as if he thinks this might not be a good idea after all.

“No, I’m not! I’m not, I’m… I’m…” Eddie searches for the word for the overwhelming rush of feeling. “I’m _relieved_.”

“You are? Why?”

“I thought…” This next part he says all in a rush: “I thought you wanted to break up with me.”

Understanding dawns on Richie’s face. He comes over to Eddie with such purpose, catching him gently by his arms.

“I was a dick to you. I’m sorry. But there’s no way on God’s green earth I want to break up with you, hombre.”

“Hombre? Really?” says Eddie, but then he realises he’s palming at his eye, not because tears have fallen from it but because they’re threatening to. “Shit. Uh, I look a mess.”

“No, you don’t. Well, you do actually, but it’s cute.”

Eddie laughs a little, but then Richie is putting a finger under his chin and tilting his face up to kiss him. Disappointingly, just as soon as he starts, he stops.

“Wait, you really are home alone, right?”

“Yeah,” says Eddie. “How did you know I would be?”

“It’s Friday night. Mama’s got a date with the Weird Sisters and a curling iron.”

“You’re a lucky guy, you know. She almost stayed home tonight.”

“Ah. How serendipitous for us,” says Richie, leaning in to kiss him again, but Eddie laughs and pushes him back very slightly.

“That’s not really what serendipitous means, you know.”

“It’s not?”

“No, it’s when you get lucky by accident, like… meeting the love of your life on the next train because you missed your first one.”

“Huh. Okay. Well, then, it’s serendipitous that I tripped over a four-foot parking bollard when I came out of school because its height reminded me of you and that’s why I came over.”

“Fuck off,” Eddie laughs, pushing him again, then kissing him again, then messing up his painstakingly coiffed hair – then kissing him again. When Richie breaks from his lips to whisper that he tastes like cherries and Christmas, Eddie feels his stomach go taut with the same twisty-tight feeling he gets whenever Richie touches his thighs or kisses his neck.

Eddie licks his lips and whispers back, “It’s just cherry ice cream I possibly smothered in cheap brandy.”

“Booze,” says Richie. “That’s a good idea.”

They can’t take any more brandy without Eddie’s mother finding out, but there’s some sherry and at least a few shots’ worth of vodka in a bottle under the sink that looks so old Eddie isn’t entirely sure his mom doesn’t use it as paint thinner. They mix it with Coke, though, and it goes down okay.

“Got any music?” Richie asks, one hand in his pocket, the other swilling his drink around. “Might as well turn it into a real party.”

“Hm, we don’t have a lot. Like I said, the tapes are all obsolete since my mom sold the cassette player. There’s a few CDs.”

“Whatcha got?”

“Billy Joel’s entire back catalogue and, um, _Voulez-Vous_ by ABBA.”

“Alright, I can go for ABBA. Just don’t tell anyone.”

At first they just sink into the couch, sipping their drinks. It’s not awkward, the silence. It’s nice. They sit side by side, and Eddie leans into Richie’s shoulder a little. After the first two songs, ‘I Have a Dream’ comes on, slowing everything right down, so that Eddie can give Richie his own apology without the inappropriate backdrop of a jaunty Euro-disco beat.

“Just so you know, I’m sorry too. About the other week. When I said I didn’t ask you to get involved with the whole Gard thing.”

“It’s okay.”

“I actually thought it was very cool,” says Eddie, but he can’t look at Richie when he says this, because he feels a little silly. “So thank you.”

They top up their drinks. Eddie glances at the clock in the kitchen, but based on her usual pattern his mother won’t be home for another couple of hours at least. Reassured, he returns to the other room where Richie is standing in front of the mantelpiece, peering at the framed photographs of baby Eddie and bouncing lightly in time with the music.

“Cute kid,” he says, taking the glass Eddie offers him.

“I know. What went wrong?”

“Nothing. He just grew into a handsome, hunky _beast_ of a man,” says Richie, grabbing Eddie around the waist. He’s already a little drunk. Eddie suspects he started before he got here, but it doesn’t matter. He’s here, and he’s in a good mood, and all Eddie wants is to be around Richie and good moods.

Eddie hasn’t had much experience of being drunk, but one thing he has noticed is it always makes music sound better. He’s always been somewhat hostile to dancing, but now he and Richie sway together, building a gradual rhythm, and they do dance for a while, and as usual Richie does things which other people would look stupid doing but which he makes appear cool and breezy; spinning Eddie like he’s Patrick Swayze, typically uninhibited as he dances with surprisingly decent rhythm. Even more surprising is he apparently knows all the words to ‘Does Your Mother Know’, and he grins that wide, eager grin as he sings without a hitch – _you’re so cute, I like your style_ – pulling Eddie in by the drawstrings of his hoodie. But as the song builds so does their energy; they get wilder and wilder until they’re practically jumping instead of dancing, fingers locked together, their socked feet pounding a rhythm on the carpet, their singing more or less curtailing into a kind of elated semi-shouting.

When the song’s over Eddie rests his forehead against Richie’s, Richie’s arms on either side of his neck. They’re both panting a little, and grinning, then laughing.

“How’d I get so accidentally lucky, huh?” says Richie, docking his nose in the crook of Eddie’s neck. They pull apart for a second, and then Eddie stumbles upon his mouth, hot and sweet and eager. He slips his hands under the back of Richie’s now untucked shirt and on to his warm skin, pulling him closer. They stay like this until it tires them out, which is about another song’s worth of time. It’s only because of the gap between ‘If It Wasn’t for the Nights’ and ‘Chiquitita’ that Eddie hears the sound of his mother’s voice on the gravel path outside.

Then he gets a weird sensation, because although his whole body freezes, his mouth still manages to say, “Shit shit shit shit shit,” very quickly.

Richie’s seen practically every horror film ever produced in the western world and Eddie can confirm the guy isn’t scared of much, but right now his eyes, slightly glazed though they are, fill with fear and – because it’s Richie, after all – the faintest flicker of amusement.

“ _I don’t mind that you have a cat, Laurie. I mind that it keeps coming into my garden and using my Boston Fern as a litter tray_ ,” Eddie hears his mother saying loudly, voice shrill. “ _I don’t_ care _if it’s meant to be an indoor plant! You keep your nose out of my business_ and _my botany!_ ”

Thank God for his mother’s permanent readiness to argue with the neighbours. Eddie uses the time to grab Richie’s shoes, jacket and tie, shove them into his arms, and drag him, along with the glasses still half-full with vodka and Coke, into the kitchen. ‘Chiquitita’ is still playing but Eddie will have to come up with an explanation for that later. Right now, his focus is on pushing Richie out of the back door, a task made difficult by Richie’s constant, Woody Woodpecker laughter.

“Shh! She will _hear_ you, numbnuts,” Eddie hisses, so Richie claps his hand loudly over his mouth, like a campy silent movie actor, and sniggers into that instead. “Put your shoes on or you’ll get hypothermia.”

Eddie is practically wrestling Richie to the ground outside just to get him out of the door, but he can’t help laughing too. It’s slightly hysterical laughter, but it feels better than fear over his mother bursting through the door and finding her son dancing to her ABBA CD with the only living creature she hates more than the neighbours’ cat – Richie.

“Ouch,” says Richie, rolling on to his hands and knees in the grass, giggling weakly. “You’re maiming me, Eds.”

“You need to get out of here before my mom comes out and starts trying to skin you alive.”

“Pfft, I can take her,” says Richie, waving a casual hand, but he’s got his shoes and jacket on now, and just as he’s stuffing his tie in his pocket, Eddie hears his mother enter through the other door in the hallway. Richie puts a finger to his lips to acknowledge he’s heard, then gives Eddie a slow smile from behind his finger, and then turns on his heel. Then he’s gone, off into the dark like a fleeing vampire.

“I had to come back early, sweetie,” his mom says, bustling into the kitchen only a seconds after Eddie’s shut and locked the back door. “Liz told me it’s prom night at that school. Why didn’t you say anything?” She pauses, her brain apparently catching up with her. “Were you outside just now?”

“I was… chasing off the neighbours’ cat.”

“That stinking _cat_.”

Eddie nods, trying to look mousy so she might feel sorry for him – alone on prom night in his pyjamas with nought but a cat for company – and not notice the smell of vodka emanating from where it’s been slapped down the kitchen drain.

“Oh, sweetie,” she says again, coming over and embracing him. He must smell of sweat from dancing at the very least, but she doesn’t seem to notice this either, so intent she is on coddling her poor, undateable son. She pulls away briefly. “Is that… ABBA I can hear?”

“Um. It’s homework. For a history project on… the ‘70s.”

“Oh, well. If that’s history, I’m ancient!”

She’s in a reasonably good mood – she’s probably a bit drunk too – and by some miracle Eddie gets away with the whole thing. As he lies in bed later on, he wonders if this counts as lying, but then remembers what Richie said: it’s not lying, it’s just omitting things.

Then he remembers something else Richie said.

_How’d I get so accidentally lucky?_

_Never mind_ you _, Rich_ , Eddie thinks, neither unable nor wanting to smother the stupid smile on his face as he pins his arms on the pillow behind his head. _How in the hell did I?_

*

He goes to school early on Monday so he can buy sour punch twists from The Soda Hut on the way. He knows Richie’s locker combination (and Richie knows his – this isn’t some one-sided stalker type of situation) and plans to sneak them in there as a surprise.

As soon as Eddie’s bought them and left the shop, he worries it’s too random a gesture. Should he have bought something with a little more weight behind it? Emotional weight, that is. Hershey’s Kisses? Sweethearts? Does candy even _have_ emotional weight? Everything has emotional weight for Eddie. Bouts of flu. Accidentally stepping on ladybugs. Richie seems less mentally burdened by such things and for this, Eddie envies him.

“How was the dance?” Stan asks Bill at lunch. “Did you have the time of your life?”

“Did you owe it all to Marcia?” asks Ben.

The joke goes over Bill’s head. He’s too busy trying to figure out how to fit the cheeseburger he’s stuffed with Barbecue Ruffles into his mouth, angling it this way and that.

“Um,” he says eventually, “okay, I guess. Didn’t last long. Some idiots tried to sneak Klonopin and Adderall in. It’s like, what’s the point? Why couldn’t everyone just stick to the Rotherstein blueberry vodka ass-jamming technique?”

Bill doesn’t name the culprits, but he glances at Richie’s table when he tells the story. Then he crunches into his burger, and about sixty-seven Ruffles drop on to his lunch tray.

Eddie catches Richie at the end of school, making sure – for Richie’s sake – that the hallway is mostly empty before approaching him.

“Hey.” He leans against the locker besides Richie’s, cutting straight to the point. “Did you take drugs at the dance?”

“Nope,” Richie says breezily, almost like he’s expecting the question. He jams a text book into his very beaten-up backpack. “Why do you ask?”

“Bill said your friends smuggled in prescription drugs. Adderall and stuff.”

“Yeah, I guess they did. Not my thing.”

“So you left early because you wanted to come see me, and _not_ because you were about to get busted for trying to get high off ADHD meds?”

“Eddie,” Richie says, slamming his locker shut with a flourish. “I'm already _prescribed_ Adderall. Why would I try to get high off it?”

“Oh,” says Eddie. “Oh right. Yeah, that… probably doesn’t make sense.”

He doesn’t know why he didn’t know this about Richie. He doesn’t know why Richie never felt it was important to say.

“Shit. Sorry,” he adds, a little awkwardly, and then he pulls from his own backpack the sour punch twists he never got around to posting in Richie’s locker. “Got you these?”

Richie grins, taking the proffered candy. He doesn’t seem bothered by what Eddie’s just asked him, but Eddie is.

“I wasn’t calling you a junkie or anything,” says Eddie.

“It’s okay. I’m not offended. I know I definitely look like the kind of dude who’d abuse prescription drugs,” says Richie, already unwrapping one of the sweets. “I _am_ a little offended that you don’t trust me not to have ulterior motives for coming to see you on Friday. Let’s face it, if I needed a hideout, it wouldn’t be the home of my sworn enemy, Mrs K. She’d rat me out in a second. No reward necessary.”

Eddie looks at his feet. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“Okay,” says Richie, waving a hand, like it’s all forgotten. “Wanna walk home with me?”

Eddie nods, and they start up the now-empty corridor, and if Richie stops to have a cigarette outside the school gates, waiting for the stragglers to leave so they won’t be seen walking together, Eddie doesn’t say anything. Saying things, he’s learning very quickly, is what causes problems in the first place.

*

**January 2012**

_S t o p f u c k i n a r o w n d_ Eddie arranges the magnetic letters on the fridge to say. There’s only one _u_ , so he has to make do with what’s there. Still, it’s mildly inspiring. He’s also inspired himself merely by managing to get out of bed at seven a.m. this morning. He had showered and caffeinated himself by half past.

He’s ready to tackle the leviathan.

His mother’s bedroom is at the back of the house; dimly lit, floral somehow without ever giving the impression of colour. It smells floral too – powdery pale rose, lavender – but this has been dusted over, since her death, with the musty stench of absence.

Despite Eddie leaving it until last, it’s not actually the most cluttered room in the house. This isn’t because his mother didn’t put things in here. It’s because his family members have already pilfered most of it. Her paltry amount of jewellery, her clothes, her beloved music collection. None of it was left to him, for which he is immensely grateful, but it seems heartless even for his aunts to have already been in here to ransack the place, tipping his mother’s possessions into trash bags, heaving them over their shoulders and marching out like the world’s most audacious burglars.

He moves around the room carefully, forcing himself not to stop for coffee breaks, praying he doesn’t find anything more salacious than the five or six well-thumbed romance novels stuffed in the night stand.

By the time he’s done, a couple of hours later, the last of his mother’s world is encased in three sagging trash bags by the door. The only things that remain un-bagged are a small golden chain which had fallen down the back of the vanity so that even Aunt Marie’s beady eye couldn’t spot it, and the two chunky family photo albums which, when he was a kid, used to live in the cabinet in the living room, but which he has just unearthed from the gap beneath his mother’s bed.

He doesn’t particularly want those either, but curiosity has him lugging them into the kitchen and dumping them on the table. Once he’s settled with the second coffee he’s been denying himself all morning, he has a flick through.

The first one mostly contains photos from before he was born. Aunt Liz’s wedding where Uncle Alec wore orange flares, sisters’ trips to Portland, retro New Year parties, lots and lots of boats. His dad probably took those; he liked sailing.

Then, towards the end of the album, his parent’s wedding day, and a few sun-flared snaps from a honeymoon in the Pocono Mountains. His mother was much thinner back then. She was kind of pretty too. Not because she was thinner; just because she looked happy with his dad, and his dad – although Eddie can hardly believe how sometimes – looked happy with her.

He closes the book with a snap, putting it in the pile next to the stupid Howdy Doody Cookie Jar to dump on Aunt Marie’s doorstep before he leaves. Then he drags the second album towards himself, flips it open, skims the first few pages containing more faces he vaguely recognises. Then he turns another page, and his heart leaps at the next few photographs in their flimsy plastic sleeves.

Himself as a baby, chubby for the first and only time in his life, cradled in his dad’s hairy arms. His dad looks like a cop from an ‘80s TV show, with a big moustache and a polo shirt with a popped collar which Eddie’s squidgy little hand has taken a triumphant fistful of.

There’s a picture of his father dangling Eddie’s fat little legs in their summer shorts over a Harley Davidson, identical proud grins on their faces. There’s one of him sitting Eddie on his lap while pink ice cream dribbles from a cone down Eddie’s unrelenting fist. Then there’s the smaller copy of the Christmas family portrait that used to hang in the living room; his parents in hideous roll neck sweaters, and Eddie, about three years old, with a bowl cut and bowtie, gazing anxiously at the cameraman who was trying his damndest to get him to smile.

Eddie uses his phone to snap a picture of the Harley Davidson one. He’s about to send it to Stan, but then changes his mind and sends it to Richie instead.

Richie texts back almost instantly.

**_Dude… your dad was hot_ **

Eddie flips through a few more pages, trying to find a picture of his dad without the cheesy Tom Selleck moustache that he can send, but soon he’s disappointed to find he’s reached the point in the album at which his dad would have been dead.

He sees a few pictures of his mother, some of his aunts, more of himself – sobbing on his first day of school, glowing orange in the light of cake candles at his seventh birthday party ( _Care Bears_ themed – and his mom was actually surprised when he came out as gay), sitting astride a bright pink carousel horse on Old Orchard Beach (really, she was _completely_ surprised), blowing bubblegum on some rocky promenade, the sun in his eyes. And as he flips the pages, he notices more and more of the plastic sleeves are empty.

Then: something vaguely disturbing.

A boy in a _Ghostbusters_ t-shirt, knobbly knees and ankles exposed in denim shorts, his face ripped through by black ink.

His thoughts snatch for an explanation, landing at first on _Hunter_. Hunter as a kid, gone rogue with a Sharpie. But then Eddie turns the page, and sees four unharmed images of Aunt Marie, his grandparents, two Portland sunsets. He turns the page again. More blacked-out faces. All his. One has been scribbled so hard the glossy photo paper has ripped.

He wants to slam the album shut, but his hands won’t let him. He keeps going. The worst ones are the group shots, family barbeques and Christmases, all marred and made eerie by a distinctive black splodge on the fringes. He tips the book back to the start, to the pictures of himself as a baby, trying to figure out why the vandalism has only started halfway through the album.

Eddie’s startled out of his thoughts as one of the letters on the fridge, its flimsy magnet weakened by time, falls to the floor with a small clatter.

And then he remembers: the picture of his mother and his prepubescent self, pinned to the fridge like a totem.

He looks back at the album. All the pictures he’s been banished from have a year inked neatly on their backs no earlier than 1988. In all of the pictures the pen has stabbed at, he is older than twelve.

His skin prickles horribly. The coffee he’s just downed threatens to come back up. All he can hear is his own heavy breathing, the thump of the blood in his ears. But he can’t take his eyes off the pictures as the realisation, dark and oily, creeps up on him like a looming shadow. Pictures not disfigured by his cousin, but by his mother. He’s somehow sure of it.

He stands up from the table, pushing the album away from him. He picks up his coffee mug and empties the remainder of the liquid in the sink. Then he takes the whiskey still out from last night and slops a few shots into the mug, purely because it seems the appropriate thing to do. But knocking it back does little besides make him feel even sicker, and he hangs over the sink, gazing out at the garden with its dying lawn and dying bedding plants, his vision twitching.

Did she really hate him? Or was she just losing her mind towards the end? Can cancer even _make_ you lose your mind? He ought to know – he’s Googled it often enough to fan his own fears of doomed genetic inheritance – but right now his brain refuses to remember.

A memory, poisonous and ugly, burrows into his head so suddenly he actually claps a hand to his ear.

_“You can’t leave. You can’t leave. You don’t have any money.”_

_This is said with triumph, but Daffy’s throat is stuffed with dollar bills beneath Eddie’s bed, which is Eddie’s own triumph._

_“I can’t stay here either,” he says, stuffing clothes without discernment into a backpack. “Not with you. Not anymore. I’m sorry.”_

_He yanks open the drawer to his nightstand, reaching automatically for his inhaler but stopping when his fingers latch on to the cool plastic. They tighten around it._

_“Do I even need this?” he asks, turning to where his mother stands helplessly in the doorway, her hands worrying at her hair._

_“Of_ course _you do! Christ, you’ve had asthma attacks, haven’t you, Eddie?”_

_He looks at her, then at the thing in his hand, then just to see her flinch he hurls it back into the drawer and slams it shut. Daffy Duck is retrieved from beneath the bed and stuffed into the bag, which is then zipped up. Eddie elbows his way past his mother, out of the bedroom. She follows, wailing, her footsteps heavy thumps on the hallway floor._

_“Why are you doing this? Why won’t you just let me e_ xplain _?”_

_He stops at the front door, spinning on his heel. “Because I don’t see how you can explain it! You’ve lied to me all my life. That’s not normal. That’s not what mothers do.”_

_“All mothers lie to their children, Eddie, because all mothers want to protect them. If you can’t see that –”_

_“No,” he cuts her off. “_ No _. Do not turn this around on me. I’m tired of taking on the burden of your weird bullshit. I’m going.”_

_“You want to run away? See how long you last!” she shrieks._

_He hoists the backpack up on his shoulder. He isn’t ready; he isn’t supposed to leave yet. He needs another year, maybe two, needs more money –_

_But her face, red and sweating as she slumps against the wall, is wild, and he doesn’t see how he could ever stay now._

_“I’m not coming back, Mom. You know that, don’t you?”_

_“Is that what you think?”_

_Her voice, suddenly soft, almost dreamy, like a soothsayer, as if she knows something he doesn’t._

_“Is that what you think?”_

For thirteen years he’s proved himself right. And now, she’s proven him wrong. Because he is back, isn’t he? Back in Derry, back in this house – never intended as a gift, he now realises, but as one last spiteful gesture. A burden he’s been compelled to return to; a burden he’s now compelled to shift.

In his mind, doors long closed and triple locked in his mind begin to open. It was the medication. She always filled his prescriptions for him, and that day – and only ever that day – he’d decided to do it himself. It was ridiculous, he’d told her, for a grown man to have his mother running around town doing his errands. He made his own money now. He would go to the pharmacy himself.

And the whole terrible truth that had been unearthed as Greta Keene, still popping Hubba Bubba at the age of twenty-three, had leaned in conspiratorially across the counter, permanently pissed at the world she’d been confined to and looking to wreak havoc, to proclaim her amazement that Eddie was _still too fucking dumb_ to figure it out.

_Figure what out?_

_That there’s nothing wrong with you – other than that you’re a real dumbass momma’s boy._

No illness, it transpired. No epilepsy, no deficiencies, no hereditary predispositions. No asthma. Not even an allergy. Not even fucking _hay fever_.

And still, right under his nose and yet right in front of his eyes, his mother had pumped him full of pills which at best did nothing, and at worst made him compliant, sleepy, stupefied.

It was worse once he left school, when he was too defeated to argue with her, too exhausted from nights scrubbing white fat from the diner grills till his fingers were raw to do anything other than accept the two little pills laid out by his glass of milk in the morning, the two accompanying his packed lunch, the concoction he knocked back like a shot before bed.

It’s a distinctly horrifying feeling, finding out you’ve been lied to your whole life, and not one that many people – for which they should be thankful – will ever have to experience. When Eddie went to New York, he spent the first few weeks living out of a greasy hotel. His first excursion outdoors for reasons besides work or feeding himself was to a nearby movie theatre. He tried to pick the film which looked least likely to send him spiralling into a claustrophobic panic and, ironically, felt that the safest choice would be _The Truman Show_.

What resulted was a singularly uncomfortable, highly self-reflective experience, and he bounced up out of his seat and left the theatre before he got the chance to witness Truman exiting through the door of his artificial world and finding his freedom in the real one. He only found out this was how the movie ended ten years later, when his ex, a steadfast Jim Carrey fan, insisted they watch it together on Valentine’s Day.

Presently, Eddie’s phone buzzes. He ignores it. He picks up the offending photo album and goes to throw it on the trash pile in his mother’s bedroom, but he stops. Flicks it open in his hands, a little clumsily because the book is big and his hands are trembling slightly. With more careful movements, he removes every image of himself and his father, and every image of his father on his own, and places them carefully on the kitchen table in a small pile.

Then he chucks the album atop the trash bags and decides on more whiskey. His phone buzzes again, and again he ignores it.

When his breathing has slowed down, he goes to his bedroom and crawls under the duvet and puts it over his head, surrendering to the bleak and fathomless fug in his brain.

His last waking thought, before he slips into the open-armed gloom, is the brutal, incurable truth of the whole thing: that everybody in the world is loved wholeheartedly by someone – even if it’s only a parent, even if it’s just a pet – for as long as that someone lives. Everybody, it seems, except for him.

*

When he wakes, it’s the afternoon. Wind is whistling through the minute gaps in the window, curtains shut against the grey weather. Not giving himself a chance to remember anything fully, he squeezes his eyes shut and forces sleep to press back down on him.

*

When he emerges from the blackness a second time, it’s dark out. His thoughts are, finally, only physical. He is hungry. He is thirsty. He has a headache. He wants to brush his teeth.

Eddie gets out of bed slowly, shuffling into the hallway, edging round trash bags and Goodwill piles. On the welcome mat by the front door is an envelope, atop a mess of junk mail. He picks the envelope up, illuminated by the sickly orange glow of the streetlamp out front. It just says _Eds_ , so it must have been posted through the letterbox by hand, and it must have been written by Richie.

The posting of a letter by hand seems vaguely eccentric in this day and age, particularly when it’s been posted by someone he’s recently slept with. But when Eddie picks up his phone in the kitchen, he realises why Richie must have deemed it necessary. Eddie has seven missed calls and fifteen unread texts him, along with two from Stan, one from Domino’s Pizza, and another from Netflix, telling him they’re bringing out a series in five days he might like called _Loners Who Kill_.

He puts on a pot of coffee in the kitchen and tears open the envelope while he waits for it to brew. The brief letter is written on creamy personalised stationery from Wentworth’s home office.

_Eddie,_

_I had to go back home – that audition has been brought forward & well they say jump, I say how high, etc. Couldn’t get hold of you to tell you, hope you don’t think I’m a total dick._

_I feel like Jane Austen writing this._

_Please get in touch, but only when you can and only if you want to – but please do. If you want._

_I’ve enclosed something for you so don’t toss the envelope in the trash before you check it._

_I’m taking my half with me this time. I hope you do the same._

_Love,_

_Richie_

Eddie reads the letter twice. He looks at his phone properly, and sees the last couple of messages from Richie, sent about an hour ago.

**_Ok I’m worried I’ve done the wrong thing. Please tell me you were just out in town and that I didn’t need to break down the door to your house?_ **

**_Eddie?_ **

Eddie realises two things with a sudden pang of nausea, a sensation horribly exacerbated by his hunger and thirst. One is that Richie has left Derry without getting to say goodbye, and the other is that Eddie has frightened him by being absent all day and most of the evening, ignoring every attempt at communication – including an actual knock at the damn door. Eddie hastily texts back an apology and a reassurance, fingers a little shaky so that autocorrect has to do most of the work for him.

Then he remembers the torn envelope, and shakes it gently while he waits impatiently for Richie’s reply. A photo, passport sized, flutters on to the table. His half. One of the arcade pictures from Richie’s bedroom, only it’s been sliced like a conjoined twin from its neighbouring image.

Richie has given him the one where they’re looking at each other. He has kept the one where Eddie is laughing for himself.

Eddie looks at it for a long time. Then he takes the pen magneted to the fridge for shopping lists, flips the tiny photo over, and carefully writes _March 1993_ on the back. When he’s done, he places it on top of the small pile of photos already on the kitchen table, the ones he’s planning to keep.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for non-graphic references to sexual activity between under-18s

**March 1993**

“Did you know,” says Richie, as they wait in line for popcorn at Aladdin’s Theatre, “when they were shooting _Psycho_ , they used Bosco chocolate syrup instead of blood because it shows up better on camera?”

“ _Instead_ of blood? Implying they would’ve used actual blood if they’d shot the movie in colour?”

“Fake blood. Whatever. You know what I mean.”

It’s the first day of spring break. This time, when Richie called in the morning and asked Eddie to come to Aladdin’s monthly horror throwback marathon with him, Eddie said yes.

They’ve just watched _The Birds_ and now they’re getting snacks while they wait for _Psycho_ to start. Eddie can’t stop thinking about that guy’s eyeless corpse in the first movie, pecked lifeless by birds. He’d gripped Richie’s wrist in the dark when he saw it, which is probably why Richie’s telling him the Bosco chocolate syrup fact now, steeling him for the famous _Psycho_ shower scene.

When they go back in for the second movie, Richie visibly relaxes in the safe darkness which the theatre – an old converted playhouse – affords them. His shoulders slope, he stretches out his legs towards the balcony balustrade, and his long fingers trace absent patterns on the back of Eddie’s hand, and occasionally on his knee, in a way that’s so distracting Eddie can barely concentrate on Marion Crane's frantic embezzlement.

He does hate the shower scene, but surprisingly the chocolate syrup tidbit helps. What he really hates, though, is the scene with Norman Bates’ horrible little taxidermy room. Richie doesn’t have any fun facts confirming that those _aren’t_ the corpses of real birds, stuffed with cotton and hard clay leering out of the thirty foot screen.

Eddie looks away from their hard little glass eyes, distracting himself by watching Richie’s nimble fingers still circling the denim of Eddie’s jeans, only now they’ve made their sly way northwards, up to his thigh, and it’s causing in Eddie’s lower half an ache which is at both pleasant and unpleasant, and in his back a tingling which makes him a little itchy.

He looks sideways at Richie in the dark but Richie, sucking absently and continuously on a soda straw, gives nothing away. It’s like he doesn’t even realise what he’s doing. The hand meandering around Eddie’s leg is on autopilot as much as the stationary hand holding his soda.

Since this whole thing between them started, they haven’t done much besides kissing and a bit of tentative grinding, the latter mainly brought about more by necessary proximity on a single bed than deliberate intent.

Eddie is mostly fine with this, but he would be more than fine with – well, _more_. It’s Richie who seems vaguely resistant to the idea, like he thinks it’s too… soon? Too gay? And yet it’s Richie whose kisses are nearly always hungrier and harder and more persistent than Eddie’s, his hands invariably balled tighter in Eddie’s t-shirt, perhaps as a way of over-compensating for the lack of anything more significant.

Anyway, it’s not as if they’ve exactly had gift-wrapped opportunities. Richie can’t swing by Eddie’s house whenever he wants, and one or both of Richie’s parents are always home, and Eddie’s not exactly going to start shedding his clothes in the germy sports shed at school.

Still. It would be nice if they could at least discuss whether actual skin-on-skin contact will be a possibility in the near or distant future. Either way, it’s not going to happen in Aladdin’s Theatre, so Eddie cuts the torture short and locks his fingers around Richie’s to still them, relaxing when Richie squeezes his fingers in what feels like gentle agreement.

*

It seems odd that Richie should have his birthday in March. It doesn’t suit him somehow. He has the bolshy charisma of a Leo, the determined charm of a Scorpio, and yet he sits in spring as a comfortable Pisces, born the date he was due, keeping a wide berth of Aquarius one side and Aries the other.

The zodiac wall calendar hanging in Aunt Marie’s kitchen claims that a Pisces is dreamy, artistic, gentle, intuitive and shy, which helps confirm Eddie’s long-held suspicion that astrology is total bullshit.

Still, even with what Eddie considers a pretty good grasp on Richie’s decidedly _not_ gentle personality, he’s having trouble thinking of a suitable birthday present.

At one point, inspired for the first time in his life by his kooky aunt, he considers tarot cards. It seems like the kind of spooky thing which Richie, who gulps down horror movies like candy, would get a kick out of. But the only ones Eddie can find in Gerald’s Book & Bible Store have pictures of fairies and elves holding swords and crossbows, instead of skeletons and devils like the cool ones he and Richie saw in _Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors_.

“Excuse me – do you sell any more of these?” he asks the bored shop assistant, a pimply teenager he vaguely recognises as a former pupil at his school and the son of the local Unitarian minister.

“Any more what?”

“Tarot cards? Real ones, I mean, with the creepy medieval stuff on.”

“Well, no. That’s divination. That would be anti-Christian.”

Eddie holds up the Angel Cards, baffled. “But you sell these.”

“Well, _yeah_ ,” says the shop assistant impatiently. “Those have _angels_ on.”

Eddie gives up on the idea, sulkily disappointed in Derry’s small parade of utilitarian shops. He wants to get Richie something _special_ , something that nobody else would think of getting for him.

Surprisingly, when inspiration hits for a second time, it’s courtesy of Eddie’s mother.

She pops her head round the door of his bedroom while he’s working on a history assignment due in after the break.

“I’m just heading over to Murphy’s, sweetie. I’ll be half an hour.”

“Murphy’s?”

“The framers. They have that store near the gas station. I’m taking Billy.”

She means the signed Billy Joel postcard from Aunt Liz which, as far as Eddie’s aware, has so far been inhabiting a cellophane sleeve between the pages of a Judith McNaught novel on his mother’s nightstand.

The next morning, Eddie hops on a bus to Dexter.

He knows where the memorabilia shop is, the one Aunt Liz got the postcard from. He’s been there before. When he was a kid, there used to be a slightly battered acoustic guitar standing upright in the front window, allegedly signed by Garth Brooks. Sometimes his mother and aunts would just come and gaze at it like glassy-eyed teenagers while Eddie stood fidgeting beside them. Garth had accidentally smeared the autograph with his own famous hand, which apparently justified a significant bump in price.

Eddie isn’t stupid. He knows the stuff these places sell isn’t cheap. But still, if he could just find _something_ , even if it’s _tiny_ …

“Hands out your pockets,” says a tobacco-gruff voice from the gloom at the back of the store.

Eddie jumps. Then he frowns, as the implication that he’s here to shoplift sinks in.

“I’m a serious customer,” he insists.

“Uh-huh.”

The dark little shop is bursting at the seams, its square-footage far too small for its impressive collection. From one wall, a severe yellow sign yells: **_DO NOT BE DAUNTED_** _. We supply only **fully certified, GENUINE** autographed merchandise with **TAMPER-EVIDENT HOLOGRAMS**._

“What’re you looking for, kid?” the shopkeeper grunts, clearly eager to get Eddie and his potentially sticky fingers out of his store as quickly as possible. “You want a centerfold signed by Corinna Harney? Keep you busy for hours.”

“Um, no thank you.” Eddie glances up, spotting a framed Golden Globes program signed by Roger Moore. “Have you got anything to do with horror movies?”

“1932 Parisian postcard, signed by Bela Lugosi in red ink.”

“Seriously?”

“Eighty-five bucks.”

“Oh-kay.”

His heart sinks right down to his stomach. If he can’t even afford a lousy postcard signed by a cheesy dead vampire, there’s really no point in him being here.

Eddie turns to leave. The store is so cramped that on his way out he catches his hip on a side table, rattling a small display of ink-smeared guitar picks and blazer pins.

As he blurts out an apology and turns to steady the table, he spots a shelf lined with band names he actually recognises; photographs and flyers and scraps of yellowing torn-off paper encased in cheaper frames than the sports and movie memorabilia.

After a quick, hopeful appraisal, Eddie points to the bright green gig flyer that says _Throwing Muses, Civic Auditorium, Tuesday May 2 1988_ , because he knows Richie likes Throwing Muses and he also knows their name will be cheaper than Nirvana or Pearl Jam.

“Can I look at this, please?”

Sighing, as though it’s some great ordeal destined to end in robbery or a kick in the nuts, the shopkeeper trudges over. He picks up the flyer in its frame, removing its flimsy cardboard backing to reveal the promised Certificate of Authenticity.

“ _This is an original piece of music advertising material_ ,” he reads aloud, as if Eddie can’t read it himself. “ _One autographed handbill. Subject(s); Throwing Muses. SIGNED and inscribed picture; hand of Charles Thompson AKA “Black Francis”, 1988_.”

For once in Eddie’s life, something which is already good has actually gotten better. Because even Eddie knows Black Francis isn’t in Throwing Muses. He’s in The Pixies.

“How much would you want for that?” Eddie asks, trying not to sound too eager.

The shopkeeper checks the price. “Twenty-eight bucks. My wife tickets these. Overpriced, if you ask me.”

“So you think we could maybe make a deal, then?”

“Nope. Twenty-eight bucks.” He slots the cardboard backing on to the picture, and returns it to the shelf. Regardless, Eddie’s nod is determined.

“Can you hold it for me, please? I’ll come back with the money.” And then, for some vaguely mortifying reason, he adds a jaunty little, “No sweat on that front.”

“You’re gonna have to put a deposit down, little man.”

“I’ve got…” Eddie checks his pockets, careful to separate out the money he’ll need for the bus back to Derry. “Four dollars and sixty-seven cents. Will that do?”

The shopkeeper sighs again.

*

“Are you having a birthday party?”

They’re lying on their fronts in Richie’s bedroom, playing _Street Fighter_ , because Derry has decided the one thing this week off school has been missing is an afternoon of muggy, stormy rain.

“What, like, with a sheet cake and party bags and a pervert clown?” says Richie, only half concentrating as he focuses on the game, tongue peeking out from between his teeth.

“No, I was thinking more like with spiked punch and bad music and someone throwing up in a plant pot and people having sex in your parents’ bed,” says Eddie.

Richie pauses the game. “Bad music? You think my party would have _bad music_?”

“All parties have bad music.”

“Just how many parties have you been to?”

“I’ve seen enough after-school specials to know how these things go.”

Richie snorts, resuming the game. “Well anyway, no. My parents haven’t offered, I haven’t asked. You should know me better by now, Eddie. I don’t even like seeing half the people I know at school, let alone in my house.”

“What _are_ you gonna do then?”

Richie shrugs. His long fingers on the game controller are rapid.

“Masturbate. Take a long bath. Eat enough Hot Pockets to send me into cardiac arrest. Not necessarily in that order, not necessarily separately.”

“Same as every year, then.”

“What can I say? I don’t like surprises.” He glances sideways at Eddie, who’s still waiting for a real answer. “I’m not really planning on doing anything. My parents are going to this antique car show thing in Bangor. I figured you and me could just, I dunno, hang out here.”

“Your parents are going out on your birthday?”

“It’s not a big deal. We’ll have dinner or whatever in the evening.”

Eddie is surprised, but perhaps this is just yet another of the ways in which Richie’s family are distinctly more modern than Eddie’s. If Eddie’s mother had it her way, he’d still be eating ice cream cake and wearing a paper crown on _his_ birthdays.

“Unless,” says Richie, slamming his thumbs against the controller and sighing when, on screen, Eddie’s character manages to overhaul his own. _K.O._ blasts on to the screen in red, and Richie tips the controller lazily on to the carpet. “Unless maybe you wanna go with them? Not to the lame-ass car show, I mean. But there’s a decent mall in Bangor. And a huge arcade. What are you laughing at?”

Eddie smothers his mouth with his hand. “I’m not laughing. I’m just thinking about how your eighth birthday party was at an arcade, and your tenth birthday party was at an arcade, and your _eleventh_ birthday party was –”

“What, you think because I’m becoming a man I can’t celebrate my own birthday in an arcade?”

“You’re not becoming a man, you’re becoming seventeen.”

“Oh, but you learn the truth at seventeen, Eds.”

“Which is?”

“That you’re never too old to go to an arcade and kick a nine-year-old’s ass at _Final Fight_.”

“I heard that if you play ‘At Seventeen’ backwards, you can actually hear Janis Ian singing those exact words.”

Richie laughs, then slaps the carpet a few times to rouse them both, picking up the abandoned controller. “Come on, let’s go again.”

“Can’t, sorry.” Eddie starts to kneel up, bones creaking from an afternoon of near-constant sprawling. “Said I’d be home by nine.”

“Lame. As. Fuck, Rolento,” says Richie, switching the game to One Player mode. “You’re staying over on Saturday though, right?”

“I am?”

“Well, according to you I’m some sentimental creature of habit, which means the only possible order my birthday can follow is arcade, pizza, _E.T._ cake, and then a sleepover, no?”

“You forgot the part where you throw up out of the car window on the way home from the arcade because you eat eighteen boxes of Milk Duds.”

Richie waves a hand. “Goes without saying.”

“Any ideas for how I’m gonna convince my mom that you’re not the devil incarnate and I can spend the night at your place without needing an exorcism afterwards? Or my stomach pumping? Or both?”

Richie kneels up to meet him. He loops his arms lazily around Eddie’s neck and sighs.

“Hmm,” he says, and he teases a kiss without fully pressing his mouth to Eddie’s. “I dunno, Kaspbrak. You’re a smart boy. I’m sure you’ll figure something out.”

*

This is what Eddie figures out:

“Mom. It’s Richie’s birthday on Saturday. I know you don’t think a lot of him, but I’ve been invited to spend the evening at his house, and I really hope that doesn’t upset you but he’s my friend and I’d like to go, and also I’m seventeen, and most kids wouldn’t even bother asking. Also…”

He peers down at his hand, where the terrific speech he had all written out has been reduced to a sweat-smeared jumble of _Ri hie – upset – sevent en – al hol – sorry_.

“Also there won’t be any alcohol, and his parents will be there. And they’re not vegetarians or smokers or Communists.”

“Do what you want, Eddie,” is his mother’s stony response. “Just don’t expect me to drive you there or pick you up or feel sorry for you when that boy crushes up drugs and puts them in your breakfast cereal.”

But on Saturday morning there’s a light drizzle in the air, and she does drive him to Richie’s house because she thinks Eddie making the six minute bike journey will result in a lethal mixture of rheumatism and pneumonia.

Eddie has the autographed flyer nestled safely in his bag between his toothbrush and his inhaler. In the end, he had to empty the entirety of his money box and borrow six dollars from Stan (with his booming homework business, he’s the only person Eddie could think to beg from) to pay for it. He doesn’t care. He just hopes Richie hasn’t undergone sudden enlightenment in the past week that’s resulted in an all-encompassing passion for jazz or something.

He wants to see Richie’s reaction straight away, but almost as soon as he’s out of his mom’s car, he’s strapped into the back of the Toziers’ humming Jeep Cherokee.

“You head into Bangor much, Eddie?” Richie’s dad asks when they’re halfway to the city, glancing at him in the rear-view mirror.

“Not really.” Eddie’s tongue grasps for something to tack on the end. He’d said ‘sir’ when he first started coming round to Richie’s house, but all three Toziers had put a stop to that pretty sharpish, Richie being the most mortified. Eddie never knows what to use instead. Went? Wentworth? Mr T? Definitely not Mr T.

“We used to come out here all the time when Rich was a kid. Take him to the folk festivals and the State Fair every July. You ever been to the State Fair, Eddie? Of course, we had to put a stop to _that_ the year of the _clown_.”

“Dad –”

“Oh boy, that clown really tried his damndest to get you to take one of those balloons, Richie, and you just screamed the goddamned house down,” Richie’s dad laughs, shaking his head. “We were so humiliated. Poor guy, that clown. Real bad day at the office. Of course, it’s not so bad when your kid’s three or four, but Rich was _nine_.”

“Dad, Eddie doesn’t care…” Richie tries, but his voice is drowned out by his dad’s hearty laugh and his mother’s accompanying chuckle in the front seats.

“No, they were good days, though. Gets real hot in the summer out here. You want to head out to Bangor in the summer, Eddie, see the ocean and the City Forest in all its glory. You like harness racing?”

“Um…”

“When are we meeting up for dinner?” Richie interrupts.

“Six?” his mother suggests.

“Seven?” Richie counters.

They’re in the city now, Richie’s mother making observations about the loveliness of the water as they drive down the long beachside road. The tepid rain has disappeared with Derry, and the sky’s a constant blue, the kind cities on TV always seem to have. Eddie rolls his window down and inhales deeply, savouring the salty coastal air, the crystal blue of the wide, glittering ocean.

“Oh, the weather’s just fantastic,” Richie’s dad says, as if it isn’t true if it isn’t remarked upon out loud. “Good job, Richie.”

Richie rolls his eyes.

They park up by the beach, the air filled with the shrieks and jingles of a nearby fairground. Getting out of the car is like an instant dreamy transport to a vacation. Eddie always goes brown in the sun, and he twists the pale underside of his wrists out now, almost expecting an immediate change.

“There’s a chilly wind coming off that sea today. Sure you boys don’t want to come with us to Wheels on the Waterfront?”

“Tempting offer, Dad, but I think we’ll pass. Hey, don’t be stingy with that camera, though.”

“I get it. You’d rather stay here and check out the talent, huh?”

The beach is dotted with sunbathers and gaggles of girls playing volleyball in impractical bikinis, and this seems to be what Mr Tozier is referring to.

“Hey, Went darling? Could you please try not referring to teenage girls as _talent_?” Richie’s mother says, hopping out of the car she is much too tiny for.

“What? Oh come on, Mags, obviously I mean for the _boys_.”

When they’ve parted ways, Richie’s parents holding hands in a way Eddie didn’t realise real-life parents actually did, Richie rubs his fingers into his eyes, under his glasses.

“Tell me why I feel like I’ve just gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson?”

“I’ve never known your dad to be quite so…” Eddie searches for the appropriate word. “Chirpy.”

“I think he’s on something. Like, besides a mission to humiliate me, I mean,” Richie says, shaking his head.

“Where are you going, Rich?”

Richie stops in the middle of the boardwalk lining the beach. He jerks a thumb over his shoulder. “Town’s this way.”

“I thought we could stay here and check out the talent?” Eddie says, earning a swift shove to the shoulder.

Eddie vows not to have any say in how the day goes (unless he thinks something Richie wants to do is going to result in death or serious maiming) so they start with ice cream sodas in a parlour more stripy and vintage than the one in Derry’s lacklustre mall could ever dream of.

Then they happen across a bustling music shop, with heavy wooden beams and cowboy hats and Fender Stratocasters on the walls, and rows and rows of crisp-edged, expensive vinyl. Richie’s parents have given him money instead of presents, and when Richie buys a New York Dolls CD, he buys one for Eddie too.

“You’ll like it,” is all he says, when Eddie tries to protest.

They rifle through vintage shirts in a patchouli-scented thrift shop, suck on new and interesting flavours of gumballs they’ve never seen stocked at The Soda Hut, and then, for one long, glorious hour in the afternoon, they lie on the beach, chomping Big League Chew and barely speaking, just daydreaming and sinking their backs into the toasty sand. For a few minutes here and there, Eddie’s pretty sure Richie even falls asleep.

Maybe they don’t have to live in New York when they’re older. Or if they do, maybe they could holiday on the coast. Maybe Seattle – Richie would like that, with its music scene – or Miami, or Cape Cod. Richie searches for the sun like a flower, but Eddie’s never really been one for beaches. He hates being barefoot, and he hates the way sand spills on the floor when he gets undressed after a day at the sea, and he hates the little creatures that scuttle in between the lumps and lines of rock pools.

But he likes the warmth, and he likes the thought of hot clam chowder and cold lemonade, and breezy open shirts and sea-salty kisses, and holding hands as the ocean washes over their feet, and balmy evenings and night swimming and day sailing, and beachfront Ferris wheels with tiny, twinkly lights –

“Let’s get out of here, man, the sand's scratching my balls like a motherfucker,” Richie’s voice comes suddenly, interrupting the daydream. They get up, brushing off their impractical jeans, and head for the amusement arcade.

Bangor’s arcade is nothing like the paltry little rumpus room behind the back of Derry Mall where the kids in their class used to have their birthday parties. It stands alone on a huge plot of land with its own parking lot, and a big midnight blue sign – _The Twilight Zone_ – arching over the sweeping four-door front entrance.

Rather than being the only two teenagers in a sea of hyperactive children, as Eddie feared they might be, the place is populated almost entirely by kids their age. They’re all chatting and flicking enviable bangs and crowding round pinball machines and shooting their on-screen selves with red and blue plastic guns and lounging on shiny vinyl sofas in the food court. Eddie sees two girls in ripped tights sharing a huge milkshake at the bar, their fingers hovering by the counter-top, very clearly interlinked.

He knows it’s a little different for girls, maybe, but Eddie’s heart still finds the sight kind of thrilling. He turns to see if Richie’s noticed, but Richie’s long gone from his side, hypnotised by a game they definitely don’t have in Derry called _Splatterhouse_. There’s a picture of Jason Voorhees on one garish side, wielding his signature machete. A light-up sign above the game station reads: **_The horrifying theme of this game may be inappropriate for young children… and COWARDS_** , which no doubt speaks to the very centre of Richie’s soul.

Richie flat-out refuses to let Eddie pay. He swaps ten dollars at the cash exchange for a gargantuan heap of plastic tokens. Like with the CD, Eddie tries to argue. But even if the rest of Aunt Marie’s zodiac calendar was utter bullshit, it did say – in a small box entitled _Flaws_ – that a Pisces is too generous. If that’s a flaw, it’s a pretty good one. For Eddie’s sign, Virgo, the _Flaws_ box just said: _annoyingly fussy_.

“I brought you here because it’s what _I_ wanted to do,” Richie says. “Why should you have to pay?”

Richie selects arcade games the way a vintner selects fine wines. Their route around the vast arcade is measured. They start classic: _Pac-man_ and _Frogger_ , _DigDug_ and _Supermario_ , followed by a circuit of clunky cabinet racing games they can’t really get to grips with.

Then they gorge themselves on the machines they’ve never seen before: _Punch-Out_ , which Eddie sucks at, _After Burner_ , which Richie kind of sucks at, _Ikari Warriors_ , which they’re both frankly _excellent_ at. Eddie’s never been one for group projects, but he works his ass off with the joystick and single button the game affords him, and when the machine declares them winners in sparkling gold letters they both have cramping fingers, and Richie looks positively euphoric.

Clearly, he overestimated how many tokens they’d need. Even three more grisly turns on _Splatterhouse_ doesn’t eat them all up, and when they only have a half hour left until dinner, Richie jingles the plastic coins in his pocket and asks Eddie what he wants to use them for.

“You’re picking, remember?” Eddie reminds him.

“Yeah, well, I’m out of ideas.” Richie glances around the dark arcade. “We could whack ‘em in a slot machine? Or the claw thing? Want me to win you a teddy bear, Eds?”

“What about those?” Eddie points to a huddle of photo booths lining the back wall. They’re all empty except for one at the end, which is occupied by a couple who are quite theatrically making out.

Richie and Eddie waste a couple of tokens on a failed first attempt. Richie can’t figure out where the camera is and Eddie can’t fit even his small frame inside the booth comfortably, so the Lord only knows how the couple next door are managing. Before they know it the machine has given them their four flashes in quick succession and has spit out a strip of disappointing blurs.

“So it seems you’ll have to sit on me,” Richie says, but his tone is more practical than romantic. He makes sure the flimsy curtain is shut all the way across before allowing Eddie to perch on his lap. Eddie thinks of the girls sharing the milkshake, but doesn’t bother to bring it up.

Richie leans round Eddie carefully to slot in the tokens, and this time they’re ready for the camera’s impatient flashes.

They both laugh at the results once they’ve swiped them up from the depository tray.

“Jeez,” says Richie. “I swear I just get more goddamned handsome with age.”

“You want ‘em?” asks Eddie, holding out the strip.

Richie shakes his head, but he’s smiling. “You keep them, I just lose stuff.” He seems to hesitate for a moment, hands in his pockets like a dawdling kid, before adding, “Hey, don’t show my parents, will you? You know what they’re like.”

Eddie shrugs and nods, confining the strip to his jeans pocket.

He never really knows what Richie means when he says this kind of thing about his parents, but presumably it means something about how when his parents get hold of something, they tend not to let it go easily. They are, as Eddie’s fourth grade teacher would have put it, A-Plus Chatterboxes, and while Eddie thinks it’s kind of nice how the Tozier house is almost never quiet, he can see how it might be tiring to live with. Even for someone with almost boundless energy, like Richie.

They have dinner in a restaurant in the city centre, with black walls and huge leafy trees and trickling water fountains, with proper wine menus and lots of seafood entrées Eddie’s never heard of before. It’s expensive. Once again, he’s forbidden from paying for anything.

“It’s our treat, silly,” says Mrs Tozier, as if the foie gras-steamed clams alone don’t cost over fifteen dollars.

Richie’s dad can’t decide between two starters, so he just gets _both_. Eddie can’t imagine being so blasé about money, but it must be pretty nice. Richie once told him there was no way in hell he would ever become a dentist. Eddie thinks he’s a little crazy not to at least consider it. _Two_ starters!

“You know, Eddie,” says Richie’s mom, when Richie goes to the bathroom while they’re waiting for their mains, “I don’t want to embarrass you, but I just want to say real quick that I think it’s so lovely you and Richie have sparked your old friendship back up. We thought it was such a shame when you were – well, when you had to leave the school for a little while.”

“A real damn shame!” Mr Tozier chimes in, rapping his knuckles implausibly on the table.

“And you know, between you and me – well, I’m sure you already _do_ know – some of the kids Richie was hanging around with were just…” She pulls a face above her wine glass, which says enough.

She’s speaking in the past tense, as if she thinks Richie doesn’t hang around with those kids anymore, as if Eddie’s steered him safely back on to the path of the losers and nerds. He doesn’t correct her, but he likes the idea that Richie hasn’t mentioned his other friends enough for his mom to think they’re still in the picture. That, maybe, he only ever really sees fit to mention Eddie.

Richie seems to know that they’ve been discussing him, because when he gets back to the table he flits his eyes around them all and demands, “What’ve you been saying about me?”

“Oh, we were just discussing how it’s customary when a young man turns seventeen for him to up his quota of one haircut per year to two,” says Richie’s mother, with a smile so warm Eddie feels almost jealous.

On the way back to the car, the sky a chalky orange strip above the calm sea, Eddie spots the two girls from the milkshake bar coming towards them along the sandy coastal path. The girls are still, he’s pleased to notice, holding hands, except now they’re bumping sideways into one another as they walk, apparently intent on bowing their heads to speak, as if the thought of putting any distance between one another in order to walk comfortably hasn’t even crossed their minds.

Richie’s dad notices them too. He waits for them to pass before moving to unlock the Jeep. Without saying a word – unusual for someone normally so loquacious – he sighs heavily and shakes his head after them, before yanking the driver door open.

It seems more than reasonable to assume that Richie’s dad, who is kind and gentle and a connoisseur of terrible jokes, is only sighing at the state of the girls’ ripped tights and aggressive band t-shirts, rather than at anything else.

*

“Of _course_ you can gift wrap,” says Richie, sitting on his bed later that evening. Eddie’s present sits in his lap like something precious. “I bet you can fold fitted bedsheets and make those fucking… fancy napkin swans at Christmas too.”

Eddie, who can do both of those things, smiles. He’s suddenly a little shy.

“God, I hope you don’t think it sucks,” he says, perching next to Richie on the bed.

He’s been excited about giving Richie the gift all day, but now he can actually see it in its dotty wrapping paper, cradled in Richie’s hands, he’s suddenly worried that it’s not enough – or maybe too much, or maybe weird and useless. Maybe Richie would rather just have more candy. At least candy has a purpose. Sort of.

“Why would it suck?” says Richie. “It’s from you.”

“Gross.”

“Yeah, that was pretty gross.”

Richie then proceeds to tear off the neat wrapping paper like a hungry bear.

It’s clear he doesn’t have much idea what the flyer is at first. It could probably be mistaken for an invitation to a concert, were it not for the date, May 2 1988, emblazoned across the front. Eddie quickly flips it over in Richie’s lap, and instructs him to remove the back of the frame.

Richie does so, his hands kind of clumsy. Manual dexterity has never been his strong point, and for one horrible moment Eddie thinks the flyer is going to rip as Richie yanks away the cardboard backing. But it survives – just – and Eddie watches as Richie’s eyes flit across the inscription on the back of the flyer one, two, then three times.

“Really?” he says finally, eyes still glued to the paper, like he’s scouting out a prank. “I mean, it’s really real?”

“Really real.”

“God, it’s like… having a piece of him in my hand. That sounds weird. You know what I mean.” Richie suddenly snaps out of his reverie, looking up. “Eddie, this must have a cost a fucking fortune.”

“No, no, it didn’t,” Eddie says quickly. Too quickly. “I mean, it didn’t _not_ cost – it wasn’t a _fortune_ , it was just… I mean, I could’ve gotten you an awards program signed by Roger Moore and that would’ve cost four times as much.”

“I’m glad you didn’t. I hate James Bond.”

“Me too.”

“This is amazing, though.”

“You really like it? You’re not just saying it, are you?”

Richie looks at him like he’s stupid. “Dude. Is that a serious question?”

He doesn’t put it back in its frame. Richie’s the kind of guy who tore the tags off the ears of his Beanie Babies as a kid and unboxed his Star Wars figurines to play with them. Unlike Eddie, who keeps boxes purely on the basis that they’re ‘nice’ and won’t light a pretty-smelling candle for fear of wasting it, Richie always likes to get at the meat of things. He holds the flyer in his hands, not caring that it might somehow devalue it. He runs his finger over the felt tip autograph like he’s touching the Turin Shroud.

He turns, bumping his forehead to Eddie’s gently a couple of times, then kissing him.

“You’re the best. Really.”

Then he gives, not a second kiss, but a hug, which Eddie isn’t really expecting. They’ve known each other forever, but Eddie can’t remember the last time they actually hugged. It’s kind of perfect, though. Richie’s body is warm, and his hands are firm on Eddie’s back, and his hair, all soft and wild, tickles the side of Eddie’s face.

Eddie says, “You’re tickling me, doofus,” and feels Richie hug him tighter in response. “You’re okay, aren’t you, Rich?”

“Of course I am.” Richie pulls back a little to show his face, as though to prove it. “It’s just good, you know. Isn’t it? Having someone.”

He still seems a little withdrawn, though, so Eddie leans in, kissing Richie’s nose, his chin, his lips. At first Richie only smiles into it, but then he begins to kiss Eddie back.

“You’re the best,” he says again, a whisper this time during a brief pause for breath.

Then, in a rare show of consideration, Richie moves the flyer carefully to a spare square of space on the bedside table. Then he puts his arms around Eddie’s waist; then they’re kissing again.

Eddie cannot call himself a kissing connoisseur, because Richie is the only person he’s ever done it with. But it’s always been easy, the way their mouths seem to move together, and it must be reasonable because he can feel Richie responding as their kisses grow deeper, hungrier, clumsier, and when Richie topples them back on to the bed and Eddie traces a tentative hand up the front of Richie’s shirt – where he feels goosebumps prickling, muscles tensing – Richie doesn’t stop him.

Richie’s got a hand between their bodies now. Stroking Eddie’s stomach, stroking his waistband, stroking one finger down the length of the zip on Eddie’s jeans.

His dark eyes flick to Eddie’s, a question in them, and permission is wordlessly granted when Eddie leans in to kiss him again, his tongue making its tentative way forward. Then he feels Richie taking his hand, moving it to his own zipper, their positions mirrored. They return to the kiss a little more clumsily, breathing a little more heavily, and then their fingers are fumbling with stubborn zips and tough denim and then, and then, _and then_ …

And then they’re lying there afterwards, sweating, while little sparrows pitter-patter around on the roof.

“Well, shit,” Richie breathes, as if the whole thing’s taken him wholly by surprise.

“Yeah, I’m…” Eddie nods uselessly, trying to ignore a slightly uncomfortable stickiness. He reaches for the top drawer of the nightstand, where he knows from a cold he had over winter break that Richie keeps tissues. “Yeah.”

“I’ve wanted to do that for a while, by the way. I don’t want you to think I was, like, roused to action by you showering me with gifts.”

“Oh, well – we don’t really have to dissect it right now.”

Richie rolls on to his side slightly, legs trapped. “Should we, uh..?”

They tug their jeans the rest of the way off, abandoning them over the side of the bed. Richie drops a blanket over the jeans to cover them up. They pull the second blanket over themselves.

“I’m –” Eddie starts, before cutting himself off with a yawn and giving up altogether. His fingers ball lazily into Richie’s t-shirt as he noses into the crevice between Richie’s neck and shoulder, the skin there a little pink with sunburn. The room’s grown musty and hot, and the sheen of perspiration settled in Richie’s collarbone almost glitters in the fading light of the window.

“I feel kind of nervous about someone walking in,” Richie admits, voice a little husky.

His parents aren’t just downstairs – they’re outside, soaking up the evening sun with a final glass of wine – but Eddie somehow feels a little exposed too, even with the covers over them. He tugs the blanket right up over their heads, tucking the corners behind the headboard so it’s pinned above them like a tiny tent. Their feet poke out of the end of the material a little, so they have to bend their knees to squash up beneath it.

“Better?”

Richie laughs, delighted in the way all people seem to be by the sudden construction of a blanket fort. He sifts a torch out of his bedside drawers and flicks it on.

“Good one. This wacky little tent looks _much_ less suspicious.” He’s smiling, but something a little like apprehension still flickers in his eyes in the torch light.

“No one’s gonna come in, Richie. It’s your birthday.”

“It’s my birthday? What does that have to do with anything?”

“I don’t know. Everyone should be afforded some privacy on their birthday. You could be getting up to anything in here.”

“Well, quite so.”

“Besides, the only good thing about your furnace of a bedroom is that you can hear when someone’s coming up the stairs.”

“But what if we fall asleep?”

“You think I’d let us fall asleep without brushing our teeth first? No chance.”

There’s a long silence, tempered only by their breathing, which has finally started to slow down.

Then: “Eddie?”

Eddie goes tense, the words he thinks are coming appearing tantalisingly in his head like a banner before Richie can say them out loud.

He swallows. “Yep?”

“You’re lying on my arm.”

“Oh.” Eddie moves off him, upsetting the shape of the tent slightly and having to reach up to fix it. “Sorry.”

“Think you and me could just stay in this little place forever?” Richie asks. These aren’t the words Eddie was predicting either. Richie’s taken his glasses off and abandoned them on the night stand. He always looks younger without them somehow; more vulnerable.

Eddie sighs as he settles back down beside him. “Is that really what you want? It’d get pretty boring after a while.”

A small grin quirks the corners of Richie’s lips. “Oh, I don’t know about _that_ …”

“Maybe not boring, but kind of impractical. What’s the quote? Man cannot live on wacky tents alone?”

“Don’t use filthy words like ‘impractical’ around me,” but Richie’s eyes are starting to droop, and he can’t keep the spark in his voice as he starts to drift.

Eddie wants to remind him of what he said not two minutes ago – _stop! we need to brush our teeth!_ – but he can feel himself giving in to the warmth and the softness and the steady, gentle huff of Richie’s breath too.

He curls and uncurls his fingers against Richie’s stomach, finding that it relaxes him to run them along the seam of Richie’s t-shirt, the way a child soothes itself to sleep with a blanket.

“Better than the real world, anyway,” Richie murmurs, his own fingers tracing idle patterns on the bare skin of Eddie’s thigh. “In here, I mean.”

“Everything’s the real world,” Eddie mumbles back. “Even the bits under Power Rangers blankets that people don’t know about.”

In his current state, teetering on the edge of wakefulness, this seems extraordinarily profound. Eddie makes a mental note to return to it later, but he’s also aware the note’s been made too close to a state of unconsciousness, and will be sapped away as soon as he gives himself over to it, as soon as he curls just a little closer into Richie’s hold, as soon as he breaks his vow to resist sleep until his teeth have been brushed.

And because Richie Tozier always seems to make Eddie do things he would not ordinarily do, the vow is broken, mere seconds later, when he falls asleep beneath the hood of their wacky little tent.

*

**April 2012**

Eddie wakes in a bedroom bathed in fresh morning sun. He’s alone in the bed in the middle of the room, and this plus the new luxury of a little more time in his life means he can spare a few minutes to stretch out.

He tends to sleep completely still on his back – like an otter, someone once told him – and is rewarded for this habitual motionlessness each morning by a perfect, human-sized crater, embedded slightly in the mattress, into which he can sink his back as a little morning indulgence.

It helps that the mattress is decent, the bed sheets Egyptian cotton. The high windows in the white room are triple glazed against traffic from the city, so that he’s surrounded only by a pleasant, faint buzz of white noise, and when Eddie eventually emerges from the soft cave of the bed, he showers in an adjoining bathroom that is fresh and clean, where he can gorge himself on scorching water and rich, natural shampoos.

It’s early. The city hasn’t woken up properly yet. But once he’s dry and dressed, Eddie heads to the kitchen to make coffee, and finds his _ad interim_ roommate already awake, sitting at the breakfast table by what a realtor would call the apartment’s main USP: a beautiful old floor-to-ceiling window.

“You’re up early,” Stan remarks, not taking his eyes off the _New York Times_ crossword puzzle he's been working on since Saturday night. It’s now Wednesday morning.

“Yeah, well, when your friend lets you live with them for the cost of rent never before witnessed in New York, it’s polite not to flop around in bed all day like a sad, unemployed slug.”

“I told you, you don’t have to pay me _any_ rent,” says Stan, tapping his bottom lip with the end of his pencil. He adds, almost as an afterthought, “Don’t call yourself a sad slug.”

“Coffee?”

“Oh, chamomile tea would be _great_. You’re a champ.”

They drink in companionable silence, Stan still gnawing his pencil over the impenetrable weekend crossword, Eddie gazing down on the city below which is now beginning to emerge from its sleepy tenements to a warm, dusty spring day.

Amongst the swathes of distilling gentrification, particularly in this neighbourhood, there’s a little fruit shop opposite Stan’s building that puts out browning lemons and peaches every day, seemingly attracting no business except for a thin grey cat that likes to sniff around the apple crates.

When Stan first moved here he lived above a shop just like that, except it had no bedroom, just a leaky brown bath and mice in the walls. It was a huge step ahead of Eddie, who lived first in a hotel, and then, once he had something like a steady pay check to rely on, in a dingy room in the basement of a house populated by hollow-eyed gangs of meth addicts and couples trying to kill each other.

Now thirty-six, and having acquired a number of generous promotions, Stan has only moved forward since that time. Miraculously, Eddie has actually managed to go backwards.

Of course, it’s that old-fashioned saying – going backwards in order to go forwards. This is the mantra Eddie is currently clinging to.

Now that the sale of his mother’s house is going through – the bungalow was snapped up in February by a developer from Portland who wanted to stick a dormer on the roof, rip out all the walls downstairs, and charge a pretty penny in rent to some unassuming young family – Eddie is focusing on trying to pool together as much money as he can for a cause which is still as yet largely unidentifiable.

He won’t keep all of the money from the sale of the house for himself, even if principle tells him his aunts have looted enough from his mother. And he has to pay Stan back, even if Stan doesn’t want him to.

But after that? After that, there’s no one for Eddie to have to think about besides himself, and finally he is able to enjoy at least one of the merits of being on his own: the pure, unadulterated freedom of it.

The sudden change in his circumstances feels strange, almost unmoored from reality – he’s quit one of his jobs, cut his hours on another, given up his tiny apartment – but it’s the only way he can force himself to kick his own ass out of the city once and for all.

Eddie’s phone vibrates on the table. He looks away from the cat and the fruit shop seventy feet below.

“I hope that’s not who I think it is,” Stan murmurs, eyes flicking over the top of his paper. He wears glasses these days. They suit him.

“Hmm?”

“Eddie…”

“What?”

“Tell me you’re not going round there. He’ll lock you in. You’ll be in a bunker before you know it, living off tins of expired kidney beans.”

“First of all, there’s no room for a trash can, let alone a bunker in that apartment. And secondly, I still have a key. I think I’ll be fine.”

“Notice how you’re discussing the logistics of the operation, rather than denying that the guy is totally capable of kidnap.”

“Be that as it may,” Eddie says evenly, “I need money, and he’s got my shit. What time are you finishing work today anyway? Wanna come look at cars with me later?”

“I don’t know what use I’ll be in that endeavour, but yes. I’ll gladly accompany you to look at some midlife crises on wheels.”

“You’re a good friend,” says Eddie, to which Stan replies, “Seriously. Come back here alive. We’re making enchiladas for dinner.”

Eddie’s old apartment – the one he shared with his ex, not the four-by-four box he’s just evicted himself from – was a magnolia and mahogany rectangle on the second floor of a converted townhouse, in a part of the city where flashing cop cars are still a semi-permanent fixture.

At a push for a positive review, Eddie might say it had been convenient, in that the crotchety old landlady lived on-site, and their apartment was nestled beside the communal laundry room which whirred all night on account of their neighbour whose kid seemed to vomit perpetually.

On the day they got the keys the sky was pouring grey rain and grumbling with thunder. By the time they’d lugged all their boxes up two flights of stairs, their possessions were threatening to collapse against the soggy cardboard and spill out all over the bare floorboards. The apartment had been cosy, even charming, when they’d been to view it. Bereft of its pictures and furnishings it now looked hollow, scrappy, cold. Above the fireplace, the previous tenants’ mirror had been disguising a suspicious stain the colour of claret.

“We’ll get it nice,” Milo had said, a slight wobble to his voice. “Look, there’s a wing place right across the road!”

Eddie sank on to a lone wicker dining chair, abandoned in the middle of the room. “What have we done, Milo?”

And the lack of any answer had suggested Eddie’s boyfriend was as bewildered as Eddie, except Milo’s response was to head out to the wing place, and Eddie’s response was to lock himself in the tiny bathroom and sob frustrated tears because he’d trapped himself here willingly.

Milo buzzes him in now and is waiting for him at the apartment door when Eddie jogs up the stairs. He’s put on a bit of weight since last summer, and his t-shirt and sweatpants are wrinkled. These are clothes which have perhaps been chosen deliberately, in order for Milo to showcase to Eddie how poorly he’s coping on his own. All it does is ensures Eddie doesn’t fall into the trap – of which he’s admittedly been somewhat nervous – of finding him remotely attractive again.

“Hey, you,” says Milo, opening his arms for a hug which Eddie reluctantly steps into. Milo smells of his usual aftershave, but it makes no sense with the rest of his appearance. It’s as if he’s spritzed it on last minute without any regard for how incongruous it is with the rest of his grubby attire. “It’s great to see you.”

Eddie mumbles back a similar platitude, before easing himself around Milo’s significantly taller body into the apartment.

It’s a mess, but only in the way someone who used to live here and fastidiously scrub it every day would notice. Dishes piled up in the sink. Cereal left open on the counter, begging to turn stale. Grubby shoes sit in a heap by the front door, and the whole place smells like a window hasn’t been opened since – well, since last summer.

The apartment door swings shut, trapping him.

“Can I get you anything? Coffee?”

Eddie glances at the little kitchen area. A mug depicting a scene from the Battle of Gettysburg sits on the counter. His favourite mug, a gift from Stan. It’s chipped now, and the white spot where the porcelain used to be has been stained umber from too-dark coffee and not enough washing.

 _Forget it_ , Eddie thinks, curling his fingers. _Let it go_.

The possessions he’s come for have at least been neatly placed in a box, sealed and marked pointlessly with his name, and left outside the bedroom door.

“How was the funeral?” Milo asks, before Eddie can make a quick getaway with his loot.

“Oh, you know. It was a funeral.” But Milo is at least trying, so Eddie attempts to soften his response. “It was fine, thanks. And the house has a buyer now so everything’s… fine.”

“Good. That’s good.”

An excruciating silence resumes command over the apartment.

“How are you?” Eddie asks tentatively. He’s only been avoiding the question out of fear for Milo’s frankly volatile nature. Will he force out some cheery lie? Will he start sobbing hysterically? Will he shout that single life is destroying him daily and slam his considerable fist into the plasterboard?

“I’m great. I really am great. Never better, actually.”

Cheery lie, then.

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“You sure you’re doing okay, Eddie? Can I be honest? You’re looking a little thin –”

“You know what, Milo? I went for a physical recently and the doctor actually told me my weight is completely normal for my height and age. So it turns out there’s no reason anyone needs to worry about me being thin anymore. Isn’t that great?”

Milo blinks and changes tack.

“Where are you staying these days?”

Eddie hesitates, adjusting the box in his arms. “I’m, um. Kind of between places at the moment. I’m thinking of heading out of town for a while so it didn’t make sense to be tied down anywhere. My lease was ending and Stan offered his spare room...”

“Heading out of town?”

“Yeah, I figured I’d try doing a little travelling.”

Eddie doesn’t miss the way Milo’s lip curls at this. He’s made the mistake of shaving his beard off, which makes him look considerably less handsome, and renders the expression on his face closer to an unappealing sneer.

“Travelling? What, like, with a backpack and compass and one of those fold-up paper maps? Aren’t you a little old for that kind of thing?”

“Well, I’d have gone with you but you never seemed interested in travelling much further than the end of the street, so.”

Eddie could say worse things – wants to – but he can’t let himself be drawn into another exchange with Milo, one which promises to be pointless, devoid of reason, and guaranteed to end with Milo in floods of guilt-inducing tears.

He continues quickly, “Anyway, look, thanks for letting me come get this stuff. I’m sure you could’ve done without the hassle.”

Milo shrugs, suddenly petulant. He leans in the bedroom doorway like a looming statue, arms folded across his broad chest. “No skin off my nose. Frankly I’m glad to have it out the way.”

Eddie grits his teeth, conscious that the switch has flipped and he’s now being deliberately baited. But he has nothing more to say. He’s run dry of everything – mostly hope that Milo will ever be reasonable. On his way out, his foot catches a stray DVD on the living room floor; some animated Pixar movie, the kind of sugary violet-and-lime kids’ stuff Milo’s a sucker for.

“Hey, you know who I ran into in Derry a couple months back?” Eddie can’t stop himself from saying, as he stands back to let Milo open the apartment door for him. He smiles around the words: “Richie Tozier.”

Milo frowns, placing the name. “The one with the obnoxious breakfast show you used to listen to? I can’t stand that guy.”

“Yeah. We used to go to school together, you know. In fact…” Eddie shifts the box more comfortably in his arms, leaning for a moment on the doorframe, one foot out of the apartment, one in. “We kinda had this – I guess you’d call it a little romance thing going on for a while. I mean, we were just kids. You’d think a celebrity like him would’ve forgotten all about that kind of thing. But you know what? He hadn’t.” He smiles up at Milo, whose frown has intensified. “Anyway. Thanks again.”

Eddie puts his other foot out the apartment door, and as he walks away he exhales, long and hard, as another piece of his life in this city is confined, finally, to history.

*

“Well, _I_ for one think what you’re planning is very admirable. It’s the stuff of movies. My intrepid young friend, craving adventure, heading out into the big wide world all by himself.”

“It’s just the US for now.”

Stan shrugs, handing Eddie a glass of wine over the back of the sofa. “Still pretty big.”

“Milo clearly thought it was ridiculous.”

“Milo _is_ ridiculous. He drinks SpaghettiOs out of a mug.” Stan sits down next to him with his own glass of wine, chucking a bag of Doritos into Eddie’s lap. “This is nice, isn’t it? Look at us. We’re like two _Sex and the City_ gals.”

“If _Sex and the City_ was about a thirty-six year old male accountant and his ‘intrepid young friend’.”

“Can you imagine that? _Sex and the City_ , but with us. People taking quizzes to find out which character they are. People saying to each other _you’re such a Stan_ just because they wear an anorak or don’t eat bacon, or _you’re such an Eddie_ just because they upturn an entire bottle of bleach down the kitchen sink every other day.”

“I don’t think anyone would watch a you-and-me version of _Sex and the City_. Your apartment’s not shabby chic enough, and neither of us get enough sex.”

“That’s true. We’re more like that – what’s that show called? _Two and a Half Men_.”

“Oh God. Who’s the ‘half’?”

“That pigeon that keeps trying to roost outside the bathroom window.”

Eddie opens the bag of chips, and holds it out to Stan. “So Milo messaged me while you were in the kitchen.”

“Oh Christ,” says Stan, mouth full of Doritos. “What did he say?”

Eddie flicks up the text to read it. “‘It was great to see you today, I would love to catch up properly, let me know when you’re free’. Then two kisses. Then a dollar sign, which I’m guessing is a mistake.”

“No apology for being weird? No acknowledgement of his many and varied sins?”

“Of course not.”

“You’re not _going_ , are you?”

“Yeah, I thought I’d swing by a few crappy bars at happy hour with him, discuss how he’s basically the male version of my mother and I’ve been denying it for six years, then enjoy some very disappointing Freudian sex with the lights turned off.” Eddie rolls his eyes. “No, Stanley, obviously I’m not going.”

Eddie’s phone vibrates again just as he’s putting it away. Stan quirks an eyebrow, easing across the sofa to pilfer another handful of Doritos.

“That him?”

“No, it’s…” Eddie shakes his head, not finishing his sentence, but Stan is still waiting expectantly for an answer. “Well, actually it’s Richie.”

Stan stops chewing for a moment, then slowly resumes. “You know,” he says thoughtfully, after swallowing, “I think we _could_ pull this _Sex and the City_ reboot off.” He counts off on his fingers. “You’ve got the manipulative, villainous ex, the crush on the unobtainable celebrity dynamo –”

“ _Crush_?” Eddie splutters. “Hold on – _un_ obtainable?”

“I only mean in a geographic sense.” Then realisation – or what Stan probably thinks is realisation – dawns. “Oh. _Ohhh_ …”

“No,” Eddie says firmly. “That’s not why I got the car. That’s not why I’m doing any of this.”

“Right. And you’re definitely only going to California to visit Alcatraz.”

“Yes! And Grandma Prisbrey’s Bottle Village.”

“I believe you.”

“You think I care if you believe me?”

“I think you care a _little_.”

Maybe he does. Stan’s his closest friend, and maybe Eddie wants his approval, and maybe he wouldn’t feel this way if he only thought of Richie as a friend too, but he can’t seem to help it.

They haven’t seen each other since January but they’ve been messaging a lot, with back-and-forths that can sometimes last for hours, despite Richie’s hectic schedule. Richie often goes silent for days at a time due to work, but never without warning, and never without returning with a barrage of new stories and pictures and silly little observations he thinks might make Eddie laugh.

Maybe their paths will converge in California. Maybe Eddie will organise his itinerary to ensure that happens. But he’s never been to the west coast before – Milo always said states like California were too ‘sticky and silly’ – and he’s determined to see what he wants to see, every historic site and house and national park and monument, entirely on his own if he has to.

“You know I’m only kidding, right?” says Stan, pulling Eddie from his thoughts with another crunch of chips. “I don’t think it’s bad that you’re texting Richie. If you say he’s this great guy these days, I believe you. I just don’t want to see you jump from one hectic thing straight into another. Particularly when you’re so… adrift right now.”

“Maybe that’s the _perfect_ time to jump into something hectic.”

“Maybe,” says Stan, but he’s a homebody, a workaholic, an endearing creature of habit, and he doesn’t sound sure.

On the way back from his old apartment earlier today, Milo’s comments about his weight had sparked an old memory in Eddie’s mind. Richie’s eighth birthday party, at Derry’s sticky arcade pizza place, the one Eddie’s mother had said they could attend on the condition that Eddie wouldn’t eat a single thing while he was there. It was the ‘80s, and _salmonella_ , particularly when combined with _human bacterial gastroenteritis_ , was the buzz word in every women’s magazine.

And so Eddie had had to stand there, fingers curling and hot tears pricking at the backs of his eyes as each kid clawed for a piece of birthday cake like hungry wolves, their parents watching on approvingly.

When it was time to go home, Richie and Stan – not yet his friends, the party invite having been politely extended to the whole class – yanked him into the toilets. Stan guarded the door, while Richie pressed birthday cake wrapped in an _E.T._ napkin into Eddie’s hands. A combined, concerted effort by a pair of boys Eddie barely knew but who after this would be two of his best friends for six more years.

Eddie brings it up now, but Stan seems not to remember.

“Are you sure it wasn’t Bill?”

“It was definitely you. You were complaining about how filthy the toilets were. We both were.”

At this, Stan grants the story little more than a cursory, “Cute,” but Eddie can tell by the small smile on his face he quite likes the memory, hazy as it might be.

“I’m telling you the story to remind you that you and Richie Tozier were friends at one point. Enough to consort with one another and risk incurring the wrath of my mother to give some kid you didn’t even know contraband cake,” says Eddie. “You know, I never really got why you resented him so much. Even before the whole outing thing, I mean. Bill wasn’t hung up about him. Not like you were.”

Stan shrugs. He’s picked up his wine glass now, and he traces his finger around the rim thoughtfully.

“Well. I guess, maybe, I was the only one who really noticed,” he says after a while.

“Noticed what?”

Stan shakes his head, his smile a little rueful now. “That you looked at him like he was the sun, and we were all just little planets orbiting him.”

“Oh,” is all Eddie can say, because he’s surprised by the response.

He knows, of course, that he was preoccupied with Richie in high school – infatuated, even – but he never considered that Stan might be roused by this fact to any emotion besides a faint derision. He’s never considered Stan as someone who craves admiration, or even attention – but then, Eddie was never very good at taking notice of anyone besides himself and Richie back then. Planet to a sun, just like Stan said.

When Stan’s gone to bed, Eddie stays up, knowing instinctively that he won’t be able to sleep. It’s too hot for one thing, and he’s itching to work on his travel itinerary.

He’s barely touched it all week. He’s lacked the energy to concentrate. But it seems like finally closing the door on Milo and putting down a deposit on a hideous Toyota Sienna today has reinvigorated him, because now, at one in the morning, his mind won’t stop swilling with ideas.

He works on his Michigan plans for a little while. Figures he can head south after Winnipeg (seeing a little of Canada first was Stan’s idea), cross the Upper Peninsula, stop in Houghton, Munising, Marquette, all dotted along the Lake Superior shoreline. Eddie plans out the best route to delve into Indiana too, to see the Indiana Dunes at sunset, then wonders if it would just be better to head straight into South Dakota and Wyoming; he wants to see Yellowstone, Grand Teton, then the Devils Tower, which has fascinated him since he was a kid.

Before he knows it, the sun has started to peek up again outside, he’s finished three cups of coffee, and somehow added another thousand painful dollars to his budget. Richie’s been texting him all the while. Eddie’s insomnia often proves itself ideal for their different time zones.

 ** _I think I should go to sleep_** , he finally texts, around four a.m., when his eyes are starting to itch. **_I’ve somehow managed to add four more fucking states to my trip. Gonna drag myself to bed before I add any more_**.

Richie’s response couldn’t be any more different from Milo’s. But then, Richie himself couldn’t be any more different a human being.

 ** _I’ll send you my address. I want postcards from every single one_**.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this took so long to post, it's literally been 90% done for a long time and it was just a matter of finding time and energy to finish it! but i hope it's ok! thanks for all the support on this story throughout, you guys have left the nicest comments and it's really really appreciated. hopefully see you all on my next reddie venture :)
> 
> Warnings for bullying, homophobic remarks, references to homophobic violence

**April 1993**

Aunt Marie’s calendar doesn’t say anything about a Pisces being erratic, but sometimes Richie confuses Eddie so much that Eddie wants to scream.

The fact is, Richie’s birthday really couldn’t have been better. It was, indisputably, kind of perfect.

Fast forward a couple of weeks. During morning break, Eddie approaches Richie, who is alone at his locker, with the purely innocuous intention of saying hi – just that, just _hi_. But the look Richie gives him is an expression more commonly found on the face an older brother regarding an intrusive younger sibling.

And then he does that _thing_. The thing that drives Eddie insane, and not in a good way. Richie glances around, with all the subtlety of a stray dog in a butcher’s shop.

“Just out of interest,” Eddie says, leaning against Richie’s neighbouring locker, “do you always have to do that, or…?”

“Do what?”

“Check to see if anyone’s noticed the Plague victim’s talking to you. Like, when I’m standing right in front of you.”

“Do I do that?”

“Oh, a lot.”

“Sorry.”

But Richie doesn’t sound sorry. He sounds distracted. He grabs a text book, then looks at it like he doesn’t even know what it’s for. It doesn’t help that it’s upside down. He seems to notice that Eddie’s still waiting, and tries again.

“Sorry, Eds.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Eddie decides. “I just wanted to give you something real quick.”

He rummages in his bag, producing half the photo strip from The Twilight Zone in Bangor. He smiles, feeling a little dumb.

“I know you said you’d lose it but, you know, it’s kind of customary to split these things so I thought you might want your half.”

Richie seems slightly startled by the offering.

“Come on, what are you bringing that to school for?”

Eddie frowns, retracting his hand slightly as he fights down his irritation.

“Uh, I didn’t realise it wasn’t appropriate material for school.”

“God, you know what I mean, Eddie, just…” Richie sighs, taking the photos from Eddie’s hand and – what’s more painful – burrowing them away into his locker without even looking at them. “Can we not do this right now?”

“Do _what_?”

“This thing where you try to…” Richie flaps his hands a little. “I don’t know. Make a sly point about something you think I’m doing wrong.”

“Jesus, I’m just giving you some photos.” Eddie wishes he hadn’t bothered. He wishes he’d stayed in his invisible corner, like he usually does. “Dude, I wasn’t asking you to tape them on the inside of your locker next to your fucking Pamela Anderson poster.”

“Yeah, I _know_ that, I just.” Richie’s eyes flit about them again as he zips up his backpack.

“Can you _stop_ doing that?”

“I’m not doing anything! Seriously, why are you gunning for an argument with me, Eddie? I just came from Cabrero’s class, I’m flunking the fuck out of Spanish. I could do without the extra kick in the balls. _Comprende_?”

Eddie scoffs, without actually meaning to. “I don’t believe you. There’s no way you’re failing a subject.”

“How would you know? You’re not in my class. And you know what, Eddie?” Richie sighs, hoisting his backpack up on to his shoulder, closing the door to his locker with a heavy thud. “Sometimes, it’d be kind of nice if you could just say ‘wow, that fucking sucks, dude’. Instead of always trying to tell me I’m wrong.”

Eddie can’t stop thinking about the horrible conversation all day. Even in his history class, when Ben keeps leaning over to try to talk to him.

“Hey, did Bill talk to you about coming to his family thing on Friday after school?” he’s asking.

They’re only doing a boring worksheet and Miss Locklear is pretty chilled out about them talking in class time, but Eddie barely registers the question at first. He keeps thinking about what Richie said. About Eddie always trying to disagree with him. Does he really do that?

“Eddie?”

“Huh?”

“Bill’s having this thing on Friday –”

“I know, yeah, I heard you.”

“Oh. It’s just you didn’t say anything. Or look at me. Or change your expression at all.”

Eddie looks up from his sheet. He’s been shading in a picture of a Sherman tank, and not actually answering any of the questions.

“I’m sorry, what was it?”

Ben frowns. “Are you okay, man?”

“I’m fine. I just didn’t sleep very well.”

He doesn’t seem convinced, but doesn’t push it. “Well, anyway… Bill’s family are having their party thing on Friday after school. It’s a barbeque this year, and he asked me to ask you if you were coming. His mom needs to know how much potato salad to make. Do you know she makes it with capers? It’s kind of genius.”

“Friday’s no good for me,” Eddie says automatically. “Can’t he do it on Saturday? Why Friday? That’s a weird day for a barbeque.”

“Well, _no_ he can’t, because –”

“Alright, everybody, the bell’s about to shriek at us to get out,” Miss Locklear interrupts, clapping her hands. “Pass your sheets to the front of the room, then I guess you can just head off.”

Eddie looks at his work, startled to realise he hasn’t answered a single thing. He glances at Ben fretfully, but before he can do anything about it his paper is swept up by the person at the desk in front.

He sits through math in a similar stupid haze and then, to top it all off, he can’t find Bill, Ben or even Stan and his homework business at lunch.

Eddie doesn’t want to eat in the cafeteria by himself, so he slopes off to the library instead. He picks at his food while scouring a big old hardback book on Nostradamus in a corner of the room.

Nostradamus is an astrologer with particular pertinence for Eddie, in that he predicted the end of the world _and_ treated plague victims.

Eddie manages to go the rest of the day without talking to anybody. When he opens his locker at the end of the day, he finds a piece of folded notebook paper slotted inside. It’s from Richie. It says in his trademark black scrawl: **_sorry for being a great big fucking jerk_**.

Then he’s drawn a startlingly good picture of himself being hit over the head with a Spanish dictionary by Miss Cabrero. He’s drawn an arrow to himself with the label _gilipollas_. Eddie smiles, folding the note back up and putting it in hi backpack. He isn’t exactly great at Spanish himself, but he knows from TV shows and movies that _gilipollas_ kind of means _dumbass_.

*

Part way through a history essay on a 1940s prediction that World War II would spark post-apocalyptic anarchy (Eddie’s choice of topic), Eddie realises that he hasn’t actually thought about the end of the world in months.

He used to think about it all the time. Not because he wanted to but because it seemed preposterous not to. It was as if the more potential outcomes of disaster and carnage his brain generated, the more prepared he’d be when the apocalypse inevitably came to pass.

It’s not always been about the end of the world for him, though. That’s a fairly recent development, one which started around the time his mother took him out of school. She let him rent a bunch of movies to cheer him up while he was at home recovering from his accident. He watched _Escape from New York_ while she fed him soup and applied stingy cream to his head wound, and the dreadful epiphany suddenly hit him, right there on the sofa, that he’d been dense enough to spend fourteen years of his life _not_ considering the very real possibility of a nuclear holocaust.

But before the obsession with the end times, there was the insomnia-inducing fear that he had contracted HIV from a tetanus shot. Before that, the fixation on cancer, but specifically the types which could only be suffered by men, of which Eddie felt he didn’t know enough about. Before that was the certainty that radiation was being emitted by their new microwave oven. With each new and terrifying preoccupation, Eddie would pore over library books, desperate for information he was simultaneously reluctant to receive.

And throughout all of this, hovering like an ominous fog, was the fear that his mother would die. He guiltily acknowledged that it was not so much her physical demise which concerned him, but the idea of being left alone. Orphaned. The word sounded terrible; uncanny even, like something from a horror film. As a child, he tended to catastrophize his worries to highly improbable ends, so that the horrible fantasy never included visions of foster care, or his aunts coming to his rescue, or the friendly face of a police officer. Just himself, wandering around the empty, decaying house, slowly wasting away.

He hasn’t even thought about that recently. Not for any real length of time anyway. It’s like his life’s picked up this steady, chugging pace, and all that old meandering fretting can’t keep up.

It doesn’t mean Eddie’s brain has calmed down. It’s just filled with other stuff. Richie mainly – but also school, and friends, and fantasies of a warm, slumberous summer only a couple of months away. It’s still kind of chaotic, and he still has trouble sleeping, but in a weird way it’s a sort of calming chaos, like one storm is eclipsing another.

“Do you think it’s possible to, like, ever fully shut your brain off? Without dying or being in a coma, I mean,” he asks Stan at lunch one day.

Stan considers this. “You could practice mindfulness.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s like a meditation. A Buddhist thing. It’s supposed to stop you ruminating on the past. And the future.”

“Oh, I’m not really attracted to organised religion,” says Eddie, which for some reason makes Stan laugh.

The history essay brings all the old cataclysmic fears back to the surface. He thinks of the Mayan calendar, the Rainbow Man, Miss Locklear’s Death card. The prospect of nuclear annihilation. He thinks of these things as if testing them out, to see what his mind thinks of them now.

His mind thinks: still bad, and still imminent.

There is a difference, though. It’s only slight. And Eddie only realises it once he’s finished his essay and washed his face and gone to bed, and he’s lying there, staring at the slither of moon through the curtains.

Before, the fear was that the end – either just his, or the whole world’s – was coming, and it would be painful, and terrifying, and he wouldn’t have time to do all the things he wanted to do before it happened.

Now he fears that it will be painful, and terrifying, and it will take away what he already has. What he’s capable of having. What he hasn’t had for long enough yet.

*

Anyway, then it happens. The world ends.

Once Eddie’s patched things up with Richie, it becomes clear that Bill and Ben – and, by extension, Stan – are avoiding him. He knows they’re in clubs and that kind of thing. Bill works on the school magazine, and Ben does woodwork, and Stan does just about every non-sporting extracurricular activity under the sun. But that doesn’t account for the empty lunch table, or the way Bill has stopped sitting next to him in English.

“Have I done something wrong?” Eddie asks Stan, one afternoon during Social Studies. “Bill isn’t talking to me. Or Ben. And I only see you when they’re not around.”

And because Stan is always honest, he says without much hesitation, “Yeah, I think Bill is pretty upset with you.”

“What? Why? I’ve barely even seen him lately for him to _get_ upset with me.”

“I think that’s kind of the point. You didn’t come to his family’s party on Friday.”

Eddie struggles to remember, before his mind settles on the conversation with Ben last week. “The barbeque? _That’s_ what he’s mad about? What is he, eight?”

“Yeah, I don’t think he’s mad that you didn’t come try his mom’s famous potato salad with capers, Eddie. He’s mad because it was a party for Georgie, and…” Stan shrugs, twiddling his pen. “You wanted to hang out with Richie instead.”

“How did you know I was with Richie?”

“You’re with him every Friday, aren’t you?”

Eddie swallows. His mouth has suddenly gone very dry.

“I thought,” he begins, but their teacher starts making his rounds about the classroom and is glancing over at them, so he drops his voice to a whisper. “I thought Georgie died in October.”

“Dude, I don’t think they commemorate Georgie’s _death_ day. It’s for his _birth_ day. They do it every year. Come on, Eddie, you’ve been before. Don’t you remember? Bill’s dad gave us sparklers one time and you burned your hand? Even Beverly went once?”

Eddie looks at his hand now, as if checking for evidence.

“I remember, it’s just that I… forgot,” he says limply.

“No, Eddie,” says Stan, and although his voice is gentle, it’s stern too. “You didn’t ask.”

God, maybe he really is turning into an awful person, just like his mother said. He’s upset Richie by not listening to him. He’s upset Bill by not asking after him. It even feels pretty terrible to have disappointed Stan, whose opinion Eddie has secretly always cared about.

Eddie doesn’t remember Bill’s brother that well – they were all young when he died – but he remembers the Denbroughs’ annual get-togethers, which he nearly always attended before his mom took him out of school.

They’d eat Georgie’s favourite food (hot dogs and Reece’s Pieces) and let off yellow balloons (his favourite colour), and Bill’s parents would get a little teary which was awkward for a group of eleven, then twelve, then thirteen-year-olds, but it had always seemed important to be there for Bill.

What’s happening to Eddie? Is he really so wrapped up in himself that he’s losing his ability to empathise? He should know better than anyone how much it hurts to lose a loved one.

But then he realises with a start, as his teacher comes around slapping quiz sheets on their desks, that he doesn’t even know the date of his _own_ dad’s death. He just knows that it happened in the fall, because Eddie slipped on greasy red leaves in the crematorium courtyard and spent the funeral service picking tiny black stones out of his palms while his mother wailed into a snotty handkerchief.

When Eddie gets home, before he’s even taken off his backpack, he asks his mother what date his father died.

She stops stirring whatever’s bubbling on the stove and turns to stare at him, her face stricken.

“Why would you ask me such a horrible question? Are you trying to upset me? Actively trying? Asking about your father’s passing? On a Wednesday night? On casserole night?”

Eddie doesn’t ever try to upset anybody. It just happens, and although he’s always meticulous enough that he plans more or less every single thing in his head – up to and including Armageddon – somehow he can still never see it coming.

And to top it all off, he still doesn’t know what day his dad died.

*

A week later, and despite mutual apologies, Richie still isn’t really himself.

To Eddie’s surprise, Richie’s parents grounded him last weekend over the whole flunking thing. They didn’t call it grounding. They called it ‘staying at home to focus on enrichment’, but grounding is essentially what it was. Eddie wasn’t even allowed to speak to him on the phone. It turns out Richie isn’t just flunking Spanish. He’s behind in English too.

“It fucking sucks,” he tells Eddie, the following weekend when he’s allowed out again. “I’ve probably read more books than anyone in that class, but when I sit in a lesson I just can’t concentrate. It’s like having a hundred TVs on at once, but they’re all on different channels.”

It’s a hot day. They’ve delved into the woods at the back of Richie’s house, stopping at a little stream coming in off the canal. They sit side by side at the water’s edge with their shoes and socks off, dipping their toes in the cool water, Richie more willing to immerse his feet fully than Eddie.

Eddie wishes he knew what to say that could help. It’s not just school either. Clearly there’s something else bothering Richie, and though it takes a little while, eventually Richie comes out with it.

“Did you hear about Louie Stack?” he asks, clearly trying to sound casual as he swishes a stick around in the water.

“Lilac sweater? The theatre kid?” says Eddie. “What about him?”

“He got jumped on his way home from school yesterday. They emptied everything out of his bag and threw it over the bridge. Beat him up. Apparently he’s got some gnarly fucking stitches.”

“That’s messed up.”

“I heard it was Hockstetter. I mean, Hockstetter _and co_.”

“Hockstetter? I thought he was just a wingman. I thought his life lost its meaning when Henry Bowers got put in a straitjacket.”

Richie shrugs, still making a pointless mess with the stick. “An easy target’s an easy target, I guess. And a psycho’s a psycho.”

Eddie looks at him sideways.

“It’s not gonna happen to you, you know.”

Richie sighs. “How do you know that? I mean, people’ve already been saying…”

“Okay, you got your name written in a bathroom cubicle. You and about a hundred other people. One of the walls says Sally Mueller injects herself with Easy Cheese. It’s just shit people say. Besides, you’re not an easy target, you’re…”

“What?”

Eddie shakes his head, leaning forward so he’s as close to the water’s edge as Richie is.

“I’m not gonna say it.”

“No, go on.”

Eddie sighs. “You don’t do _theatre_ ,” he says pointedly.

He knows even as the words leave his mouth that it isn’t right to say it. And it isn’t really fair on Louie Stack, lilac sweater or no – but Eddie can’t help but feel there’s some truth to it.

Hastily, he tries to lighten the mood.

“Anyway, don’t tell me you’re scared. We’re fucking _aficionados_ when it comes to getting beaten up. Need I remind you of those idyllic pre-patricide Bowers days? My broken arm, your six hundred pairs of new glasses? Stan getting thrown in that dumpster outside Dunning’s? Good times.”

Richie licks his lips purposefully. “There’s a difference.”

“What difference?”

“It’s not the same. Getting roughed up by an older kid because you’re little and dweeby isn’t the same as being targeted because you’re… different. There’s something – I don’t know. Pre-meditated about it.”

“You don’t know that. People like Hockstetter and Bowers and fucking Jagermeyer, they’re just, like, psycho opportunists or whatever.”

But it doesn’t help much, and Eddie knows this. He looks down at his hands in his lap. His thumb worries at a hangnail.

He swallows.

“You want to stop, don’t you? Louie fucking Stack has made you want to stop.”

“It’s not that black and white, Eddie. I don’t want to stop, I just…” Richie finally throws the stupid stick away altogether, so it lands with a plink in the water. “I just wondered if you’d heard about what happened to him, that’s all.”

Eddie wants to ask if he’s making Richie’s life difficult. He can’t bring himself to say the words because he doesn’t want to hear the answer, or have to see the expression on Richie’s face shift.

He knows that, even from the start, if either of them were to be deemed non-committal it would be Richie. But Eddie just thought that was Richie _being_ Richie. Flighty. Footloose. All the maddening things Eddie can’t help but like about him.

He thinks of prom night. Richie at the front door, those ridiculous blue shoes. The thought of them stopping everything permanently arouses an awful, queasy flopping in his stomach, like he’s being turned upside down.

Soon Eddie’s curfew rolls around. It’s still light out, but evening bugs are starting to flit about their faces and the sky’s turning ice cream pink, beckoning him home. He stands up, gingerly dusting grainy soil and sand off his jeans, tugging his shoes back on while Richie stays sitting by the water.

“I really want to be normal, you know,” Eddie blurts out.

He doesn’t want to say it – it feels absurd and self-pitying – but the conversation, and the heat, not to mention enduring two weeks of of solid confusion, have worn him out to such a point that he can no longer be bothered filtering himself for Richie.

“I mean, I want people to think I’m normal. But I want to be happy too.”

Richie huffs an almost-laugh, inching his feet even further into the water, with no mind for the dirty bed beneath it. When he doesn’t say anything, Eddie tries again.

“Rich, you were the one who told me that worrying about stuff is just this big, long road to nowhere. It doesn’t really change anything or get you anywhere.”

“Yeah,” Richie says ruefully, not looking at him. He scratches at his face where a greenfly keeps trying to land. “Sounds like something I’d say.”

It’s hopeless. In fact, Eddie decides as he walks home that evening in damp shoes, it’s utter bullshit.

Richie didn’t care when Eddie was just the weird diseased kid people avoided at school. Associating with the plague victim? The skinny one, a foot below everyone else, the one with the crazy mother? The weird home-school kid? The one who couldn’t handle gym – who _fainted_ in _gym class_ – who hit his head and splattered blood all over the green rubber floor?

Totally fine. Richie can associate with _that_ guy. In fact, back in September when they picked up their old friendship, Richie probably got a total kick out of how transgressive it was to associate with _that_ guy.

But letting people believe he’s in _love_ with him?

No. Absolutely not. Everything has to be secret, and although Eddie has always known this, it’s only now that he really _thinks_ about it. Secret prom. Secret birthday. Secret apology written on a secret letter, slipped into his locker. Movie theatres, arcades, private tents erected above the bed; everything always dark, dark, dark.

Eddie would have said at one point that Richie isn’t afraid of anything, not counting the odd creepy clown or cross-country mile.

But here it is. It’s loving a boy – no, it’s being _known_ to love a boy – that Richie can’t handle. Being known to love a boy, it transpires, is what puts Richie on that big, long anxious road.

And it’s bullshit, because for once in his life Eddie’s found something bold and vibrant and loud and all-encompassing that he actually isn’t afraid of. And for once in his life, Richie just wants to hide away.

*

**May 1993**

That isn’t how the world actually ends. That’s just the catalyst.

It actually ends on a hot Thursday afternoon, between lunch and math, which even Eddie, for all his preparation, couldn’t have prophesied.

He knows when he gets out of bed that morning that it isn’t going to be a good day. He wakes with a blast of new zits across his jaw and chin, and his mom’s going ballistic in the kitchen because the fridge door’s been left ajar all night, making the milk turn in the heat. Eddie forces down dry cereal for breakfast while the sour milk stench marinates in the kitchen sink.

Despite the bad omens, he sets off for school with half a pot of Noxzema smeared across his face and a vaguely hopeful plan for himself and Richie. He tears a page from his math book at the school gates and scribbles out a note.

**_From one fucking weirdo to another – please meet me in our crappy shed at lunch?_ **

He intended on bringing some sort of gift, but all his backpack contains is an inhaler and the world’s most boring lunch. He picks at it while he waits for Richie to show up at the sports shed late that day. His apple sticks have gone so brown from the day’s heat he can barely tell them apart from his sad carrot sticks. Just when it looks like Richie isn’t going to show up, the door bangs inwards, making Eddie jump.

“Sorry I’m late. Ellison cornered me in the corridor and started talking about how Mohol bush babies sleep in unoccupied beehives. I just don’t know when I’m ever going to use that information.”

“It’s okay.”

“Did you know a bush baby can jump nine times higher than a frog? More information I don’t need, but you can have it.”

“Great, thanks.”

“So what’s up?”

Eddie shrugs, shifting slightly where he’s sitting on his backpack on the floor so Richie can sit down next to him. “I just wanted to talk. I feel like things are, I don’t know, not okay between us.”

“Not okay?”

“Well, yeah. You don’t get that feeling?”

Richie appears to consider this. “Do you think we’ll ever just have a normal conversation again? About, like, Seinfeld or whatever?”

Eddie shakes his head. He moves to stand up, grabbing his backpack off the floor.

“You know what, Richie? Fuck you.”

“ _Wow_. What have _I_ done?”

Eddie spins to look at him. “Nothing. As usual, it’s me making a dick out of myself for your sake.”

“Eddie, I just don’t want an intervention.”

“Well, maybe _I_ do. Jesus, it’s not all about what you want, Richie.”

“I wasn’t –”

“Can you not see that I’m trying to figure this out for us? But you won’t let me. I don’t know _how_ you want me to talk to you. Like a friend? Like something else? You know, it’s like one minute everything’s fine, the next it’s not, and when I try to talk about it and figure out what going on with you I get this stupid, clueless act from you. Like you’ve forgotten that you’re not with your dumb fucking friends anymore.”

Richie stumbles to his feet too. “Okay, _not_ cool.”

“I _know_ that wasn’t cool,” Eddie snaps. “I’m _sorry_. Your friends aren’t dumb, okay?” They _are_ dumb, and it pains Eddie to have to say otherwise. “I’m just very tense right now!”

“Well, then, calm down!”

“Oh gee, why didn’t I think of that?” 

Eddie rubs his hands over his itchy face, where dust has begun to settle. He lets out a noise, some weird, frustrated growl, and grabs his backpack.

“I’m going,” he says, just as Richie says, “I don’t wanna do this anymore.”

Eddie stops halfway to the door, already reaching for the handle. He feels that he should say _why?_ or _what do you mean?_ but the sudden constriction of his throat strangles any attempt at speech. He turns instead, looking at Richie silently, and Richie looks back with an expression on his face that’s somehow simultaneously apologetic and earnest.

He licks his lips. “I just… I just can’t, you know? It’s a lot. Too much.”

“I’m too much?” Eddie asks, hating the way his voice hitches.

“No, not you. It’s just things were so much easier before.”

“Then we’ll go back to how it was,” Eddie says quickly, his mouth talking before his brain can slow it down. “Okay? I won’t ask you to explain things anymore. I won’t expect anything.”

“No, Eddie,” Richie sighs, looking down at his sneakers. “ _Before_ before.”

Eddie stares at him. He isn’t a crier, but suddenly he can feel tears pricking the backs of his eyes and he wills them not to fall.

“But you started this,” he says, a stupid wobble to his voice. “And when you want it to stop you just click your fingers, is that it? And I jump?”

Richie holds his hands out, palm-up, like a surrender. “Eddie, I didn’t plan any of this.”

Eddie wants to say _so fucking what_ , but those words won’t come either. He knows there’s anger, bubbling beneath the surface, but it’s so numbed by shock he can’t summon it into the open. Outside, he can hear kids laughing and talking, the dull clink of baseball bats. Distantly, the fourth-period bell rings.

“Don’t hate me,” Richie says in a quiet voice. “Whatever happens.”

“I won’t.”

“I mean, it’s complicated. Us.”

 _Us_. What a bizarre, undefinable thing.

They stand in silence for a moment, listening to the kids shouting across the fields outside, punctuated with whoops of laughter. Richie picks up his backpack, taking a step forward. Eddie watches him; and then, as if struck by a brilliant idea, he grabs him, Richie’s face between his hands, and kisses him.

It’s a hard kiss, and he knows by the way Richie stumbles slightly that he’s surprised by it. Still holding Richie’s face in his hands, Eddie breaks from him and says, “Don’t. Whatever you’re doing just don’t. Please.”

“Eddie –”

Eddie kisses him again to shut him up. He’s relieved when he feels Richie give in, when his hands come up as if to hold him; then the door to the shed swings inwards with a clatter, and Richie’s hands on Eddie’s shoulders turn to flat palms on his chest, shoving him away.

Bodies cram the doorway. A gaggle of girls in yellow gym shorts and white t-shirts peer in at them through the gloom. Freshmen. Eddie relaxes slightly.

Richie shoulders past him, his backpack thumping Eddie on the way for good measure.

“Richie, wait,” Eddie calls after him, running to keep up.

“Go away, Eddie.”

“ _Wait_.”

“Wait? For what? For more people to notice us?”

“They probably didn’t even see anything. And even if they did, they’re fucking freshmen. _Girls_. They don’t even know us,” Eddie splutters, struggling to keep up with him as Richie strides across the field.

“So fucking what? You think those people who put Louie Stack in hospital were his best fucking buddies?”

“It’s different.”

“You’re right. This is much worse.”

“Richie, please. Just stop for a second.”

Richie does stop, so suddenly that Eddie almost falls into him.

“I told you this would happen, and now it has, and you don’t even care,” he says, his voice horribly low, a tone that Eddie’s only ever heard him use that time he kneed Jagermeyer in the balls. “That’s why people think you’re weird, Eddie. Not because you hit your head in gym class. Not because you had to leave school. It’s because you don’t react to things like a normal goddamned person. But – hey.” He shrugs, both his fists clutched around one strap of his backpack, knuckles white. “I guess you got what you wanted in the end, right? So just leave me alone.”

Eddie’s head feels hollow. He can’t get enough air. He wants desperately to go back and start over, to do everything differently, but it’s too late.

For the rest of the afternoon, he floats through classes in an awful daze. He writes robotically, if at all, playing Richie’s words over and over in his mind instead of concentrating on lessons. Richie’s expression, panicked and torn, becomes a permanent fixture in Eddie’s mind.

He still feels fairly sure the girls won’t say anything – that they perhaps didn’t see anything, and even if they did, they haven’t been at Derry High long enough to have a clue who Richie is, let alone Eddie. He needs to find a way to talk to Richie, to tell him not to worry, but when the bell rings at the end of the day the corridors are packed, full of students shuffling and pushing and shoving.

He eases his way to the lockers where he looks up and locks eyes with Richie briefly – but Richie’s a few feet away and surrounded, and Eddie’s vision swims a little as he tries to distinguish him from the small hoard of other kids circling him. Some of them are Richie’s friends, and their words become clearer as Eddie draws up to his own locker.

“Kristy was saying –”

“Dude, Kristy doesn’t know shit.”

“Hey, watch it, man, that’s my _sister_.”

Eddie freezes, face hidden behind his locker door so he can listen without being seen.

“Why would she make it up?” That sounds like Hannah Duntor, one of Richie’s frequent lunchtime manicurists. “Come on, Richie, you can tell us, it’s not really a big deal.”

But her tone is nasty, and at odds with the words themselves. Eddie risks a peek and sees how they’ve got Richie cornered, like lions to a quivering gazelle. He feels a flicker of rage at the sight, and closes his locker without even taking what he needs from it.

Eddie steps forward, then stops, as if the linoleum floor is sucking down his shoes. What could he possibly say?

“I didn’t _see_ it,” a small girl, presumably Kristy, pipes up, “but Josie Mackie was there, _and_ Gabby Nguyen, _and_ Bailey Coe, and they all saw.”

Eddie had counted on the girls at the equipment shed being freshmen. He hadn’t counted on them having siblings in junior year.

He’s never seen Richie look so small.

“Richie – “ he starts, suddenly able to move his feet, but he’s cut off by someone barging past him to get in on the circle – not on purpose but as if they don’t even know he’s there.

Eddie’s suddenly gripped by a new kind of rage. He’s sick of being invisible.

“Don’t fucking push me!” he snaps, in a voice he barely recognises as his own, as he shoves past the person who originally shoved past him.

“Woah, hey, Kaspbrak, chill!”

But he can’t. He feels unlike himself – impulsive, prickly-skinned with heat.

“Richie,” he says again, drawing up to him, ignoring the little crowd that’s gathered.

Richie’s expression is the opposite of grateful. He actually steps backwards.

“ _That’s_ the boy,” another girl says, maybe Josie or Gabby or Bailey. She’s tiny, with big braces and sharp eyes. Eyes fixed on Eddie accusingly.

“That,” says one of Richie’s friends, holding up a finger like a detective, “that actually makes a lot of sense.”

“Fuck off, Miller, you don’t know what you’re talking about,” Richie snaps, his voice a little hoarse.

“Dude, all I know is you’ve been spending a _lot_ of time with this one, and none of us could figure it the fuck out,” Matt Miller grins, clearly delighted. ‘This one’ means Eddie. Matt doesn’t even grace him with a name.

“I figured it was just charity,” another of them pipes up, prompting a gale of laughter.

“Which is it, Richie?” someone else asks. “Fucking for charity, or fucking for love?”

“You forgot the third option,” Hannah Duntor says, arms folded across her chest. “Fucking because you can’t get a girlfriend.”

More laughter; Eddie feels like it’s burning him. If this were a movie he’d know exactly what to say. If this were a movie he’d know exactly how to punch someone a foot taller than him in the face.

But the only muddled plan his brain can muster is to grab Richie and go.

He reaches for Richie’s wrist. Richie instantly pulls away, hard enough that he stumbles slightly.

“Don’t you get it?” he says, and he’s looking at Eddie but he’s talking to the others. “It’s him. He’s obsessed with me! He just… follows me around.”

“That,” Matt Miller says loudly, “ _also_ makes a lot of sense.”

“I’m confused,” someone else chips in, “does that count as a charity fuck, or…?”

“I’ve not _done_ anything,” Richie snaps. “ Jesus, I’m not sick.”

Eddie suffers the horrible sensation of his body dropping through thin air. When it abides, he feels sick, and almost weak. He can’t stop staring at Richie, but Richie won’t look at him.

“I knew you were weird, Kaspbrak,” someone says, but Eddie can’t tear his eyes away to find out who it is, “but not, like, _this_ kind of weird.”

“Why don’t you just tell the kid to get lost, Richie? It’s not hard.” That’s Matt.

It’s almost like an order. They all wait, the expectant silence humming like tinnitus. Richie finally turns his gaze back on to Eddie. His dark eyes are glassy, like they might spill with tears any moment, though Richie would never allow that to happen.

His mouth moves, like he’s trying to say the words as instructed but can’t.

“Go home, Eddie,” he says in the end, choking it out like a stuck bone. “Please just go home.”

Eddie doesn’t know how he makes it out of the school. How he forces his feet to lift. How he directs his body through the small crowd, neck hunched against their delighted stares.

He walks home. He counts executed monarchs in his head.

_Marie Antoinette, Charles I, Louis XVI…_

He fumbles in his bag for his inhaler, drawing hard on it like a gasping smoker.

Don’t hate me, Richie had said. Whatever happens. Even at the time, in the middle of an almost-argument, Eddie had wondered why he’d felt the need to say it.

_Lady Jane Grey, Anne Boleyn – does she count? – Nicholas II, Thomas Cromwell…_

Somehow, he’s turning on to his street. Thudding up to his house. Twisting the door handle.

_Thomas Cromwell wasn’t a monarch, idiot._

The house is dark and quiet when Eddie goes inside. The dust motes are a softly golden flare before the windows. It’s been a long, strange spring.

 _Mary, Queen of Scots_ , he thinks, before he starts to cry.

*

Eddie doesn’t feel like doing anything except trashing his room. A note tacked to the fridge says his mother’s gone grocery shopping, so he can sweep his arm across the top of his dresser and swipe the lamp off the night stand and scream into his comforter without being disturbed.

The night stand tips slightly as the lamp falls to the carpet with a thud, and the top drawer hangs halfway open. He sees the photo strip from The Twilight Zone, the Christmas mixtape, the New York Dolls CD. His destructive compulsion is so strong he doesn’t even think before he’s tearing the strip into tiny pieces, and yanking the brown plastic tape from the cassette. Then he slides from his bed to the floor, his head spinning. His eyes ache, his throat is tight. And through the ringing in his ears, he can hear the telephone.

On shaky legs he stands and goes to the kitchen to answer it.

“Hello?” he mumbles, expecting his mother, who often calls from the pay phone outside the grocery store when she needs Eddie to remind her if a certain product has recently been outlawed by Women’s Weekly.

“Eds?”

Eddie’s spine goes weak. A long moment of silence hums down the telephone wire.

“Please don’t be mad at me,” says Richie, in a voice so small it grips Eddie’s heart like a fist.

Eddie almost reflexively tells him he isn’t mad, but then he takes a moment to remember everything. He once read somewhere that a human’s ability to recall memories accurately totally sucks, but Eddie can remember everything perfectly. The mocking hush of the on-lookers, the hitch in Richie’s voice; the expression he fixed on Eddie like a kicked dog, as though _he_ were the one being hurt.

Hurt. Such a stupid, tiny word for something so mind-numbingly terrible.

“I don’t want to talk to you,” Eddie manages.

“But I need to explain,” says Richie, in a wheedling, whiny voice Eddie hasn’t heard him use since they were about nine. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking. I mean, I _wasn’t_ thinking, that’s the thing. You don’t hate me, do you? Eddie?

Eddie twists the telephone cord round and round his finger, until it starts to turn purple. He tries to will his hand to hang up the phone, but it won’t move.

“Richie?” he says finally, in a small voice.

“Yeah?” Richie sounds hopeful.

“Go to hell,” Eddie says, before hanging up the phone.

*

He refuses to go to school the next day. His mother seems pleased.

“You do look a little peaky,” she nods, holding the back of her hand to his forehead that peeps out the top of his duvet. “I’ll make some oatmeal.”

Eddie doesn’t bother telling her he isn’t sick. She can think what she wants. He pulls the covers right back up over his head, burrowing himself into his bed. Distantly, he can hear his mother on the phone to the school, the clatter of cutlery as she makes his breakfast.

He spends most of the day in bed, forcing down oatmeal and soup, nodding off into hot, uncomfortable naps, then waking with a start and feeling horrible all over again. After three, there’s a knock at the front door.

Richie must really be sorry if he’s willing to face the wrath of Eddie’s mother, disturbing them when her only son is ailing in bed.

But it isn’t Richie. Moments later there’s a knock at Eddie’s bedroom door, and Stan peeks his head in.

“Can I come in? Or are you highly infectious?”

“What are you doing here?” Eddie asks, sitting up in bed. He’s wearing old Ghostbusters pyjamas and his hair’s sticking up at odd ends, but he doesn’t care.

“I came to bring your homework,” says Stan, unzipping his backpack. “And apple latkes.”

“And to report on how much everyone’s talking about me?”

“And that.”

“I’m surprised my mom even let you in.”

“I had to promise to stay three feet away from you at all times.”

“Alright. Let’s get this over with,” Eddie sighs, budging up on the bed to make space for Stan. “Hit me with it.”

“So you were pretty hot news all morning, but then six football players face-planted Jimmy Nowak into a trash can and he had to get a tetanus shot, so then people were talking about that instead.”

Eddie doesn’t know how much Stan knows, but he doesn’t really want to ask either.

“What about Richie?” he says carefully.

Stan shrugs. “Normal.”

“Normal?”

“Yeah, normal. Hanging out with dickheads. Getting petted like a puppy by the girls. Normal.”

Eddie doesn’t know what he was expecting, but it wasn’t this. He isn’t sure how he feels. Relieved, in part, that Richie isn’t the one getting dunked into trash cans – but angry, too.

“Well. Good for him,” he says, and swallows hard against the aching lump in his throat. He picks at a loose thread on his pyjamas, sure that if he looks Stan in the eye he’ll start doing something mortifying like crying. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

“I wouldn’t really have expected you to,” Stan says reasonably, before hesitating. “So it’s true then?”

Eddie shrugs. “Think what you wanna think. Everyone else does.”

He can feel Stan looking at him from the other end of the bed. He suspects a lecture is coming – but surprisingly, it doesn’t.

“Listen, are you gonna leave school again?” Stan asks.

“Why? Do you think I should?”

“No. I think you should tell everyone to go fuck themselves.”

Eddie manages a smile at this.

Stan stands up. “I’d better go. Your mom said I had to be gone by the time the commercials were over and Full House was back on, and I think I hear Bob Saget’s dulcet tones.”

“Okay. But – hey –”

Eddie stops Stan with a hand to his wrist and instantly regrets it, thinking Stan will pull away. But Stan just raises his eyebrows in question as he shrugs on his backpack.

“Um, thanks for coming,” Eddie says. “You keep being my friend and I don’t know why, but I’m glad.”

Stan shrugs, a little shyly. “Any time.”

“See you on Monday?”

He smiles. “Glad to hear it.” He goes to the door, then stops, fingers on the handle. “And hey, uh, Eddie?”

“Yeah?”

Stan looks at him, nodding a little, as if he’s made up his mind about something.

“You’re way too old for Ghostbusters pyjamas, man. See ya.”

When he’s gone, Eddie surveys the mess of his room, as if seeing it properly for the first time. It’s shameful, and he’s annoyed at himself for letting Stan see it. He gets out of bed, picking up the junk strewn across the carpet as he goes. He doesn’t want to wake up tomorrow morning and see it all and remember everything all over again, like the pain of a burn flaring up after it’s been soothed beneath a tap.

He places his possessions back on his dresser carefully. He rifles in his night stand for super glue to reattach the tip of Daffy Duck’s beak to his money box. He rubs his sore eyes and splashes them with water in the bathroom sink, then wanders back into his bedroom, over to the window, where he flops down on to the sill and presses his forehead to the glass. 

The afternoon is hot and slow and a little gloomy. Across the street, someone is shearing the hedges. In the kitchen, his mother is starting dinner. Cars roll by slowly every so often; birds dawdle on the neighbours’ fence.

Eddie closes his eyes against it all, replacing it; he conjures up in his mind the New York apartment building – except this time, in the daydream, he’s alone. He’s beginning to question the wisdom of pinning all his hopes and dreams on somebody else. As he’s long and secretly suspected, it now seems safe only to pin them on himself.

In the future, he promises himself, he’ll be bolder.

In the future, he’ll live in the tallest building in the busiest city, and speak a lot – and _loudly_ – and say what he thinks, and go where he wants, and spend all his money on stupid things.

He opens his eyes again, seeing his own reflection staring back at him and, beyond that, next door’s cat licking its paw.

And he wonders what the person he’s planning to be will look like.

*

**September 2012**

The Sienna’s radio loses signal somewhere between the Great Salt Lake Desert and Bryce Canyon, meaning Eddie’s musical accompaniment during the western portion of his trip is limited to the two CDs the car’s previous owner didn’t see fit to remove from the glovebox: Billy Joel’s _Storm Front_ and Billy Ocean’s _Love Zone_.

Eddie wonders if there’s some kind of story there. Did the previous owner embark on a similar road trip with friends who challenged themselves to endure the entire journey listening only to music written and recorded by twentieth century Billys? Were they a sixty-year-old trying to relive their teenage years through ‘80s new wave and soul? Did they just have really terrible taste in music?

He stops in St George on his way to Las Vegas and reverses over _Storm Front_ several times, then dumps it in a trash can outside the dinosaur discovery centre.

The radio kicks back in when he’s just getting in to Vegas, along with his phone signal, which is good news for two reasons. One is that he was about ready to flip the car off the roadside if he had to go a minute longer choosing between buzzing silence and listening to ‘When the Going Gets Tough’ for the thirty-sixth time. The other is because Richie calls him. Eddie’s sitting in the brown vinyl booth of a poker-themed diner, nursing a bowl of ‘Full Flush Fries’, when his phone buzzes on the table.

“Are you listening to Suzi Quatro?” is the first thing Richie says when Eddie answers.

“It’s just playing in the diner. I don’t think Vegas realises it’s not the ‘70s. So far all I’ve seen is vinyl, wood cladding, and a lot of heterosexuals.”

“You didn’t tell me you were going to Vegas! What are you doing in Vegas? Counting cards at blackjack so you can book yourself a little birthday hooker? Fuckin’ devil, you.”

“Hate to disappoint, but I’m visiting Lake Mead.”

“Ah. Here’s me thinking ‘he’s in Las Vegas, he’s listening to Suzi Quatro’ and here’s you saying ‘I’m in an ugly diner, I’m visiting Lake Mead’.”

“I drive a Toyota Sienna, Richie. My days of gambling for birthday hookers are sadly far behind me.”

At this, a large man in a Romney 2012 baseball cap at the booth opposite grins and flashes him a couple of finger guns, while his wife frowns.

“So anyway,” Eddie clears his throat, turning to look out the window, “what’s up?”

“Well, I haven’t heard from you since Yellowstone, and I wanted to make sure you hadn’t been eaten by a black bear, or one of those bighorn sheep – and if you _haven’t_ been eaten by a black bear…”

“Or a sheep?”

“ – or a bighorn sheep, yeah, I wanted to remind you to grab a copy of this month’s _Out_ from your nearest paper goods distributor.”

“Why, is there something good in it?”

“Well, yes. Me.”

“Right, but is there something _good_ in it – ?”

“Okay, asshole.”

“Someone put you in another magazine, huh?”

“Well, yeah, once they’ve finished lauding some straight A-lister for portraying a queer in an Oscar-bait biopic for their front cover, they tend to fill the rest of the pages with little snippets from the real-life gays. Makes us feel validated.”

“Don’t be bitter, I bet you got a buffet and a cool jacket out of it.”

“ _And_ a pair of Jimmy Choos. They didn’t actually offer those to me but I slipped ‘em out in a Starbucks bag. I figure if they’re gonna put fucking Adam Levine on the cover of their magazine, they deserve to be robbed.”

“Well, it’s good to see you have such respect for the people advertising you.”

“Just buy the magazine, Kaspbrak. And don’t get eaten by a Gila monster while you’re in the desert.”

“What is your fixation on me happening across reclusive wild animals?”

“I’ve watched enough National Geographic in my time, Eddie, and I’m sorry to say it but you just _look_ like the kind of guy who gets targeted by wild animals.”

“Thanks. Anyway, you _have_ heard from me since Yellowstone. I used my limited phone signal in Bryce to tell you about that psychopathic horse that tried to walk me off the canyon.”

“Yeah, Eds, because your SOS texts from the sprawling death rocks of Utah really reassure me that you’re alive and well.”

Two hours later, and Eddie can’t stop himself sending another such SOS text from Lake Mead. A large sign by a cluster of picnic tables reads: _Lake Mead National Recreation Area is home to 41 unique species of reptiles and 12 species of amphibians, accompanying a large population of desert bighorn sheep_.

He zooms his phone camera in on _desert bighorn sheep_ and sends it to Richie with the brief caption: _I’m fucked!!_

Richie sends back: _I told you! watch the fuck out!_

Potential ruminant horn-ramming asides, though, Eddie does love it here, and not wishing to appear flippant he taps out another quick message to advise Richie as much.

It’s true that his cross-country trip has exposed him to occasional disappointments (Mount Rushmore for one, Niagara and its endless novelty mini golf courses for another), but this place – this blue, clean water, this hulking red rock to frame it, these jack rabbits bolting across the hot desert floor – it’s all so enormous, so concerned only in its own routines and whims, and Eddie loves the tranquil dignity of that, and the slow, calm time in which it all seems to exist.

He stays for some time by the northern portion of the lake, watching as the sun swings round in the sky and the shadow of the tall rocks advances across the ground, and though he’s never been much of a sun worshipper Eddie finds himself dodging the cool tide of the shade to seek out the heat. As a kid he always used to go brown in the sun. It was something he thought he’d lost, like a forgotten talent, from living in the crowded city for so long. But no, there they are, the sheeny blooms of pink-brown tan lines on his arms and legs, at once ridiculous and yet somehow comforting, as though he’s achieved something.

He watches as several yards away, about to board a paddle-boat, a mother in an enormous straw sun hat slathers sunscreen on to her kids’ bare arms and necks. She’s used so much that she can’t quite make it disappear into their skin, and they stand there like they’ve been smeared with mayonnaise. At the sight of this, Eddie recalls the golden blur of a lake, tiny violet waves capped with white chop, and his father telling him a spot of sun never hurt anyone.

A ridiculous thing to claim in retrospect, but Eddie likes the memory.

On the other hand, and almost simultaneously, it occurs to him that he hasn’t thought of his own mother in days. She used to daub Eddie in liberal heaps of Hawaiian Tropic too, until she read in a magazine that sunscreen can accelerate cancer growth, and she resorted to just trying to keep him indoors all the time instead.

Eddie shakes his head. He doesn’t want her memory; not here. It’s completely incongruous with any peace the place instils him, and frankly, he’s spent long enough sacrificing any personal calm just to keep her dreadful spirit alive in his mind.

When he’s hot and sleepy, and probably a little too dopey to operate a vehicle, Eddie leaves the reservoir and drives until he finds the next gas station.

At six in the evening the place is already deserted, except for the sweaty and determined missionaries handing out flyers by the front door. Eddie fills up the Sienna’s gasping tank, scratching idly at his arm which is just beginning to peel. Then as he makes for the front of the store a young woman in an unseasonable button-up holds out a leaflet.

“Take one?” she says, more a command than a suggestion.

Eddie glances at the proffered leaflet. It says: _Are you ready?_ _The world is ending. Will you have an inheritance in the eternal kingdom?_

Beneath it, flames appear to be engulfing earth in its entirety. The woman’s smile is gentle, as though she calmly revels in the prospect of the world’s violent demise.

Eddie takes the leaflet and looks over its text, seeing words like ‘favoured land’ and ‘financial collapse’ and ‘days of tribulation’.

“Do you have God in your heart?” the woman asks, snapping him out of his light trance.

“Huh? Oh, uh – I don’t really know,” he says, flustered that he might somehow answer her question incorrectly.

“We’re building up to the final dispensation. I’d say it’s never too late to start preparing, but that wouldn’t really be true. The end’s approaching fast.”

“Oh. Well, that’s too bad, I still haven’t seen Yosemite,” he jokes.

Surprisingly, her smile at this seems genuine, which somehow compels him to keep hold of the flyer. He folds it and pockets it before going inside the gas station.

Astro Gas ‘N Go doesn’t seem like the kind of place that would stock _Out,_ and yet there it is. It’s been stacked on the top shelf between _Playboy_ and _Hustler_ , either because the store owner has vastly misunderstood its liberal content or because he considers it equally as unholy. Eddie feel like a shifty teenager when he pushes himself up onto his toes to grab a copy.

He reads it in his car, between greedy gulps from an Evian bottle. He flips past the news and opinion columns, the slightly condescending tips on sourcing sustainable gay fashion, the two-page spread on Adam Levine (who, bizarrely, really _is_ the cover of this month’s issue).

Richie’s interview is three quarters of the way through. It takes up the majority of a single page, which he humbly shares with an ad for expensive shaving gel.

It’s the usual comedian photoshoot fare. They’ve coiffed his hair till it defies gravity, and dressed him in butter yellow, and Richie’s wry smile up at the camera suggests he knows the look is preposterous, but he digs it all the same.

 _Liking the suit, Richie_ , the magazine’s interviewer tells him, to which Richie’s printed reply is _Thanks – I’ve always looked to Land O’Lakes for fashion inspiration_.

They talk about his breakfast show. They talk about his new venture into voice acting. Richie talks about joking his way out of a mugging once, and how showbiz parties are too drugged up for his liking, despite his early 2000s association with basement clubs and toilet seats and coke cut with Lidocaine.

Is it easy to rise above salacious rumours and blog posts, _Out_ wants to know? They point out that Richie seems to be an easy target for them.

 _It is what it is_ , says Richie. _I’m endlessly fascinated by the fact that people consider me interesting enough to gossip about in the first place. I’m really boring. Do you want to know how boring I am? I haven’t driven my car anywhere in three weeks because I’m so pleased with the parking spot I managed to get. Someone tweeted that I’d been pulled over for reckless driving recently. I was like, dude, I haven’t even moved that car to go to Whole Foods, let alone Avalon._

**_O: You were recently named ranked 67 th in Advocate’s Top 100 LGBT Role Models. Do those kinds of accolades help you discount the critics?_ **

_R: If anything, they make me a little more uncomfortable. I don’t mean that in an ungrateful way. It’s very cool to be mentioned or recognised at all. [But] it’s so hard to be like, supremely positive all the time and sometimes I feel kind of a phony._

**_O:_ ** _In what way?_

 ** _R:_** _I mean, the idea of having pride, or having to_ show _that I have pride, was kind of impressed upon me from the moment I decided I wanted to pursue this kind of career. Suddenly it was like, okay, you’re gay and you’re in LA and if you’re not going to hide that then you need to do the complete opposite and be vomiting rainbows everywhere and campaigning for the ‘right kind’ of things and making gay kids feel better about themselves. And it was such a major head-fuck at first because I_ wasn’t _prideful and I’d never really had time to fully come to terms with who I was and what I felt about my sexuality before I was suddenly facing this expectation to be the complete epitome of pride and confidence. When the truth was, I was still the same person I was before I came to LA. That’s to say, awkward and clumsy and super bewildered. What I’m saying is, there are a lot of queer people out there who can epitomize pride much more beautifully and in a much more uplifting way than I can._

**_O: So are you saying that only people who’ve had a positive experience growing up gay can be positive advocates for LGBT rights?_ **

The magazine points out that Richie pauses for some time before answering this question.

_R: No. That would be ridiculous. But I don’t think I’ve always been honest about my experiences, and maybe that’s a problem. Because I’m confident and comfortable in my own skin, I’ve never really argued with anyone who’s made the assumption that I’ve always been like this. But growing up, I made a lot of poor decisions in my quest to fit in. To make my family happy, to keep my friends around, to not get given a hard time. I wasn’t proud. I certainly wasn’t good._

**_O: Because you were struggling with your sexuality?_ **

_R: It wasn’t necessarily being gay that I was fighting against, so much as the feeling of being intrinsically different. It somehow felt unjust. As though everyone else had been granted the luxury of normalcy, and I’d been singled out and burdened. Which is dumb as hell because being gay, being queer at all, is a goddamned gift, but I didn’t recognise that then. I was uncomfortable in the worst way. I ended up hurting people that actually mattered to me._

Eddie pauses for a moment, heart just tickling his throat. It’s like coming across a secret diary entry about himself, even though Richie was the one who told him to read it.

He glances down the rest of the page to see if there are any more specific details, but either Richie didn’t give them or the journalist didn’t consider them important enough to include; the former seems more likely. The interview is book-ended by talk of Richie co-hosting a fundraiser in LA to support this Democratic lesbian presidential hopeful and then, just like that, Richie’s words on the page cease.

Eddie sits there quietly for some time after, staring in the direction of – but unable to actually pay attention to – the missionaries waving their flyers outside the gas station.

In a weird sort of way, the interview’s left him feeling a little sad. Richie suggested his past wasn’t beautiful or uplifting enough, yet most of what Eddie remembers about their relationship was really that. And although it hurt so badly in the end, it hurt _because_ he’d been happy, because everything had changed so quickly, and because he’d thought he would be safe and happy, floating in that great, luminous sphere of human joy forever.

He closes the magazine, then finishes his water, and then opens it again. He stares at Richie’s picture for some time – too long, really. And then, because he doesn’t know how to express himself, because he’s never learned how to deal with pedestrian things like emotions, he texts Richie:

_Please tell me you didn’t keep that fucking hideous suit_

And Richie texts back:

_Keep it?? I haven’t taken it off once_

*

Thick heat seems to claw its way across the desert, and by the time Eddie is safe inside another motel he’s sweating awfully, even at nine p.m.

He washes under the tepid trickle of the shower head, and doesn’t let his bare feet touch the floors at any point. The room looks alarmingly like Janet Leigh’s in _Psycho_ , framed bird portraits and all. In fact, when Eddie FaceTimes Richie that night, the first thing Richie says is, “Woah – the Bates Motel’s still operating?”

“Don’t. It’s kind of really fucking gross in here.”

“Then why did you pick it?”

“It was the only one I could find nearby.”

Richie rolls his eyes. He is not, as it happens, wearing the yellow suit, but a form-fitting white t-shirt and sweatpants, which is considerably more distracting than it really ought to be.

“It’s not the ‘70s, Eddie. You’re not bound to Leatherface’s motel in the middle of nowhere. There are Travelodges now. There are Best Westerns.”

“I’m not staying in a Best Western on my salt-of-the-earth road trip.”

“Alright then, get murdered, dude, see if I care.”

“Chain motels aren’t safety blankets, Rich. Someone got stabbed with a hedge trimmer in a Pasadena Travelodge two months ago.”

“But at least in a Travelodge there are plenty of people around to hear you scream.”

“Alright, well, this was a great talk and I feel very confident about my stay here.”

Richie laughs. “I promise I’ll phone the police if I suddenly stop getting texts from you about heat rash and state traffic laws,” he says.

“You say that as if you don’t _like_ my texts about heat rash and state traffic laws.”

“Eddie,” Richie grins, “I love them.”

If Eddie could pull the stupid smile off his own face he would. It’s highly embarrassing, after all. He bought a coffee from the vending machine in the parking lot before making the call, an attempt to keep himself awake a half hour longer, and though it tastes awful he sips it now to try to neutralise his expression.

“Are you at home?” he asks, reaching to place the cup on the night stand.

Eddie’s never seen Richie’s house but he knows he lives close to the ocean, and he likes to imagine it as one of those pretty beach houses sitting high on stilts, with wooden trellis decking and crushed oyster-shell paths, like something out of _Dirty Dancing_.

(It’s a distinctly un-Richie style, and Eddie is aware of this).

“Just got in about an hour ago. I’ve been at the beach since, like, nine a.m. and my skin is officially coming off me in swathes.” Richie lifts his startlingly pink arm to the camera to prove it.

“You weren’t working?” says Eddie.

“I don’t do the Sunday show, pal.”

“It’s _Sunday_?” For the first time in seventeen years, Eddie’s been able to enjoy the luxury of several coalescing weeks without work, and with it has come a complete disregard for what day of the week it actually it is. Each golden day has simply blended seamlessly into the other.

“Yeah, which means I have to be up at four tomorrow, so you’ll be sad to know I can’t stay up long.” Richie yawns as he leans back on a cream sofa, one arm behind his head.

“Pussy,” Eddie deadpans.

Richie shrugs. “True.”

“Well, I just wanted to say I read your interview. And then I spent about an hour in a very sad Denny’s reading people’s Twitter responses to it. Turns out revealing your vulnerability is super sexy these days – who knew?”

“Is that what _they_ think, or is that what you think?”

“I’d tell you what I think, but you said you can’t stay up long.” Eddie shrugs as he sips his dreadful coffee again, and although he tries to sound confident his stomach is sort of in knots, the way it has been every time Richie’s called him, or he’s called Richie, for the past several weeks. Again, this is not entirely befitting his ideal image as a hardened man of the world, but it’s something Eddie’s slowly acquiescing to.

“I guess you’ll just have to tell me when you come visit me, right?” says Richie. “Isn’t California your next stop?”

“Death Valley,” Eddie nods.

“Be careful there, won’t you? Don’t run into any –”

“Desert bighorn sheep?”

“I was gonna say demented cowboy serial killer twins,” says Richie, referring to the atrocious slasher video _Death Valley_ they rented from Blockbuster when they were about thirteen. “But I would wager that desert bighorn sheep are equally as aggressive when it comes to tiny east coasters.”

“Hey fuck you, Mr Hollywood, you’re an east coaster too.”

“Damn, and here I was thinking my amazing teeth, tan and excellent personal style disguised my murky true origins.”

“Weird – that interview said you were humble.”

“It did?”

Eddie scrabbles for the magazine on the night stand, flipping it to Richie’s page and reading aloud, propping himself up on his elbow: “ _We’re in a busy coffee shop near his home in LA, drinking lattes, and while at first I wasn’t sure which Richie to expect – the mocking breakfast show host or the distinctly more R-rated car-crash TV presenter – I’m surprised not only by his humility but his genuine pleasantness_.”

“Aw, gee,” Richie gushes, clutching his face. “Nah, dude, I slipped her a twenty to write that.”

“Thought so,” says Eddie, dropping the magazine back on the bedside table just as he hears Richie say his name. “Yeah?” he says, lifting his phone back up.

“Can I be gross for a sec?” Richie says.

“Do you have to be?”

“I am sorry, you know?”

“What, for bribing the interviewer?”

Richie grins, but only briefly, before his expression settles back into something earnest. “For what happened between us. Sorry, I swear I don’t get a kick out of bringing it up, I know it was a long time ago, but it’s just. To have acted the way I acted and to end up where I am now? I can see how it might seem a little fucked up.”

Eddie considers this. He’s had the thought before, of course. That there’s some cruel irony in being ostracized by someone who then went on to be an extremely public representation of the very thing he had had Eddie ostracized for.

But what would have been the alternative? Richie stay closeted the rest of his life? Or finally come out, but never find any pride in that? Or joy? Or comfort? Eddie spent his last year of high school embittered, and lonely, and feeling sick about the future, about the question of whether he even had a future beyond Derry – but even after all of that, he never wanted Richie to fail. Had always felt that even if he had fallen from that wonderful concourse of happiness, Richie didn’t have to do the same.

“You know what?” Eddie says, flopping back on the bed, keeping the phone propped above him. “I don’t even wanna think about the past anymore. I really don’t. It’s pointless. And yeah, Rich, you kind of broke my dumb fucking heart when I was seventeen but whatever’s up there – whatever celestial being or cosmic alien or, I don’t know, whatever planet’s in retrograde – it’s walked you back into my life. And I could sit here and say that the reason for that is so that you can punish yourself over a mistake you made when you were a kid, but I don’t think that’s it. I choose to believe that it’s because it gives me the chance to see you as what you should be. _You_ , you know? Just you, without all the fear and self-loathing and whatever the fuck else you had to feel at that time.” Eddie pauses for a second. “Either that or it’s just an insane fucking coincidence that we both crawled into the worst bar in Derry at New Year.”

“It’s probably that.”

“Yeah, probably is.”

Richie grins. “I missed you.”

“Yeah? Well then, don’t screw up again, asshole,” says Eddie, but he’s smiling too, and this time he doesn’t bother trying to wipe it away.

When Eddie packs the Sienna up again the next morning, he rolls the magazine up, not wanting to just leave it behind in the motel room, and puts it in his backpack on the passenger seat.

The stereo gives up on him again after twenty minutes of driving. He swears, slapping both hands on the steering wheel, before begrudgingly pushing Billy Ocean into the CD slot again. Then he registers the cassette slot just beneath it.

He remembers the repaired mixtape, carefully placed in the front inner pocket of his backpack – not out of any specific desire to bring it on his trip to actually listen to it, so much as a disinclination towards throwing it away or leaving it in Stan’s apartment. When he’s stopped at a red light, he uses one hand to tug the cassette tape from his bag, upending it on to the passenger footwell in the process. The magazine spills out, along with his water bottle, his wallet, and the flyer from the gas station, unfolding just enough to reveal its header. At the next red light Eddie glances down at it.

_Are you ready? The world is ending –_

Eddie looks away, and pushes the cassette tape into the stereo.

At first nothing happens and he’s pretty sure it must be broken after all, that the careful pencil winding he swore by as a kid hasn’t done the trick this time.

Then, like something gasping for breath after being resurrected, it suddenly whirrs into life, and the opening riffs of ‘There You Are’ by the Goo Goo Dolls whine out from the speaker, almost making him jump.

Lovely, painful nostalgia rumbles through him, starting gentle then spreading; he’s seventeen again, and painfully in love without the experience required to recognise it as love, and something sugary sour is fizzing on his tongue, and his mind is churning and his fingertips are burning with all the things he wants to say and do and feel and learn – and this is not the past Eddie wants to forget about.

And he considers, with the sudden wonderment of a man who’s only just truly realised he’s free to do completely as he pleases, if Richie would mind him showing up early. Suddenly, and quite out of nowhere, Death Valley sounds like an omen. LA sounds like a sugary pink vacation. And Richie Tozier sounds like a good idea.

The flyer in the footwell flaps a little in the breeze of the open window. Briefly, he looks at it again.

_Are you ready?_

Abso-fucking-lutely not, Eddie thinks, as he considers the best way to divert from his current path towards Route 66 instead, gearing himself up for the spontaneous three hundred miles to Santa Monica Boulevard.

Being ready for the worst never really worked out for him, as it happens. And maybe the world really is going to end this year, or next year, or a hell of a lot sooner than anybody would like.

But right now, he has more important things to think about.

End


	10. Chapter 10

[ **eddie's mix** ](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7L7pJPqhf1Khdcc0M2tiSu?si=PiUKNZbQQa6SKmVO8maj-w)

1\. kool thing - sonic youth // 2. here comes your man - pixies // 3. rock the casbah - the clash //

4\. blister in the sun - violent femmes // 5. i want you back - hoodoo gurus //

6\. so easy - the candy skins // 7. the modern world - the jam //

8\. white rabbit - jefferson airplane // 9. cannonball - the breeders // 10. wild world - cat stevens //

11\. for your love - the yardbirds // 12. another girl, another planet - the only ones //

13\. the passenger - siouxsie and the banshees // 14. lithium - nirvana // 15. heart of gold - neil young

[ **mixtape 2.0**](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2ULcqn411RclL4V2SSe4Pv?si=tqvm_bWlTj24xIH5hITqBw<p)

1\. there you are - the goo goo dolls // 2. last night i dreamt that somebody loved me - the smiths //

3\. lips like sugar - echo & the bunnymen // 4. hey - pixies // 5. rebel rebel - david bowie //

6\. high - the cure // 7. no rain - blind melon // 8. if you could read my mind - gordon lightfoot //

9\. piece of my heart - janis joplin // 10. when the levee breaks - led zeppelin //

11\. give a little bit - supertramp // 12. california - joni mitchell // 13. crush - the smashing pumpkins //

14\. time in a bottle - jim croce // 15. here's where the story ends - the sundays


End file.
